Literary Terms, Devices, and Vocabulary: A Quick Reference

Posted on Mar 1, 2025 in English Studies

Literary and Rhetorical Terms

DEFINE:

  • Argumentative Writing: Speech or writing that expresses a position on an issue or problem and supports it with reasons or evidence.
  • Informative Essay: An essay that educates about a certain topic.
  • Narrative Writing: Any kind of writing that tells a story (it can be imaginary, fiction, etc.).
  • Foundational Text: Text that serves as the foundation or basis of a thought, idea, or movement.
  • Flashback: Technique in which a writer interrupts a story to go back and relive an earlier event.
  • Flashforward: Scene that temporarily takes the narrative forward in time.
  • Suspense: The building of excitement or tension as you wait to find out what happens next in the narrative.
  • Ambiguity: The uncertainty created when the writer leaves things open to interpretation.
  • Narrator’s Point of View (POV): The narrative’s perspective from which events in a story are told.

Types of Narration

  • First Person: The character or narrator tells the story, using “I”.
  • Second Person: The narrator tells the story to another character using “you”.
  • Third Person: The story is told by a narrator who is not a character in the story.

Third Person Perspectives

  • Omniscient: The narrator who knows everything about all the characters.
  • Limited: Narrator whose knowledge is limited to one character.

Figures of Speech

  • Simile: Figure of speech that compares two things using “like” or “as”.
  • Metaphor: Figure of speech that compares two things without using the words “like” or “as”.
  • Personification: Figure of speech in which an object, animal, or idea is given human characteristics.
  • Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of the words.
  • Hyperbole: Exaggeration used to emphasize a point.
  • Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds within words.
  • Consonance: Repetition of consonant sounds anywhere in words.
  • Onomatopoeia: The use of words that sound like what they name.
  • Allusion: Reference to a familiar person, place, thing, or event.

Poetry Terms

  • Bout-rimes: Rhymed ends (Rhyme words in a poem).
  • Quatrain: Poems with four lines and definite rhyming pattern.

Communication Skills

  • Informal: Slang is used.
  • Formal: Perfect grammar is used.

Authors and Styles

Emily Dickinson

Her literary style includes lyrics, short poems with a single speaker that expresses thought and feeling.

Walt Whitman

Parallelism and the use of nature. Whitman talks about himself but emphasizes the details of the world.

Facts About Whitman

Whitman had to leave school when he was 11 and was largely self-taught. He became very controversial and he self-published a collection of unnamed poems which he titled Leaves of Grass.

Vocabulary

  • Rendez-vous: Meeting place.
  • Sentinel: Lookout person or guard.
  • Lusty: Energetic / robust.
  • Execration: Angry words / curses.
  • Divergence: Variation that deviates from the standard form.
  • Frantically: In a distraught way owing to fear, anxiety, or other emotion.
  • Egalitarian: Favoring social equality.
  • Stratified: Arranged in a sequence of grades or ranks.
  • Pristine: Pure or unspoiled.
  • Supplant: To take the place of.
  • Discord: Disagreement or conflict.
  • Distinction: Difference in quality.
  • Cede: To yield or give away.
  • Denote: To name or give meaning to.
  • Circumvent: To bypass or go around.
  • Rectitude: Moral integrity, to give judgement.
  • Abdicate: To relinquish.
  • Anomalous: Unusual.
  • Façade: False or misleading appearance.
  • Rudiment: Basic form.
  • Dissipation: The art of dissipating.
  • Perennial: Persistent or constant.
  • Plausibility: Likelihood, believability.
  • Mitigate: To lessen.
  • Obstinacy: Stubbornness.

Common Phrases

  • Apple of my eye: Something she likes very much
  • Axe to grind: Disagreement to settle.
  • As the crow flies: In a straight line.
  • Break the ice: Start a conversation.
  • Blew my top: Showed great anger.
  • Beyond the shadow of doubt: For certain.
  • Bury the hatchet: Settle an argument.
  • Chicken feed: Not worth much money.
  • Clean as a whistle: Very clean.
  • Cry wolf: Say you are in trouble but you aren’t.
  • Drop in the bucket: A small amount compared to what’s needed.
  • Go fly a kite: Go away.
  • Hit a home run: Succeeded or did well.
  • Hit the hay: Went to bed.
  • In the black: Making money.
  • It goes without saying: It is clear.
  • On cloud nine: Feeling very happy.
  • Word of mouth: Talking with other people.
  • See eye to eye: Are in agreement.
  • Time To Kill: Extra time.