Allegory: A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities.
Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words.
Anapest : Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one
Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose
Caesura: A strong pause within a line of verse.Often represented by a hyphen. (-)
Closed form: A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern.
Connotation: The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning.
Couplet: A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem.
Dactyl: A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones
Denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications.
Elision: The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry.
End-Stopped Line: A line of poetry in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line.
Enjambment: A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next.
Foot: A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Hyperbole: A figure of speech involving exaggeration.
Iamb: An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one
Metaphor: A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as.
Meter: The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems.
Metonymy: A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea.
Octave: An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet.
Onomatopoeia: The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe.
Open form: A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure.
Personification: The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities.
Pyrrhic: A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables.
Quatrain: A four-line stanza in a poem
Rhyme: The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words.
Rhythm: The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse.
Sestet: A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem
Simile: A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though.
Spondee: A metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables
Stanza: A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another.
Symbol: An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
Synecdoche: A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole.
Syntax: The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue
Tercet: A three-line stanza.
Trochee: An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one
Understatement: A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration.
