vocabulary of poetry

• Rhyme

  Correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry
• Figurative language

  Writing or speech that is not meant to be taken literally
• Common figures of speech

  • Hyperbole
  • Metaphor
  • Personification
  • Simile
• Alliteration

  The repetition of the first consonants of a series of words
• Alliteration example

  • Peter Piper picked a patch of pickled peppers
• Assonance

  The repetition of vowel sounds with a line of poetry
• Assonance example


  • Rain, Rain go away
• Tone

  The author's attitude towards his/her material
• Simile

  A figure of speech that uses like or as to make a direct comparison between two unlike ideas
• Simile example

  • Clever as a fox
• Metaphor

  A figure of speech that compares two unlike objects NOT using like or as
• Metaphor example

  • The snow is a blanket
• Personification

  A figure of speech that describes human feelings or characteristics to inanimate objects
• Personification example


  • The fog looks over the city
• Dialect


  A particular form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region or social group
• End Rhyme


  The rhyming (matching of similar sounds) at the ends of the lines of verse
• Internal Rhyme


  Rhyming of words within, rather than at the end of the lines
• Imagery

  The use of vivid, concrete, sensory details, to create a picture in the reader's mind
• Meter

  Any regular pattern of rhyme
• Onomatopoeia

  The use of words that imitates sounds
• Onomatopoeia example

  • To recreate the sound of water, Merriam uses words like sputter and splash
• Poetry

  The communication of thought and feelings through the careful arrangements of words for their sounds, rhymes, and connotation as well as their senses
• Refrain

  The repetition of one or more lines in each stanza of the poem
• Rhyme Scheme

  Any pattern of rhymes in a stanza which is a conventional pattern or repeated in another stanza
• Rhyme Scheme example

  • Lowercase letters are assigned to the end rhyme of each line of poetry to describe the pattern. Example: ababab
• Sonnet

  A lyric poem which has fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter- one rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg
• Stanza

  A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse
• Stanza Break

  The blank line between stanzas
• Symbol

  A person, object, place, event, or action that suggests more than its literal meaning
• Symbol example

  • A tree may symbolize growth or stability
• Verse

  A single line of poetry (it has come to also represent stanzas and a whole poem at times because it helps state the difference between a poem and prose- prose is a written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure)
• Ode

  A long, lyric poem, formal in style and complex in form often written for a special occasion
• Narrative Poem

  One that tells a story
• Narrative Poem example

  • The Highway Man by Alfred Noyes