Random Literary and Rhetorical Terms
The title explains it all.
Terms
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- tenor
- primary subject of an epic simile
- paradox
- A statement that reveals a kind of truth, although it seems at first to be self-contradictory and untrue.
- bowdlerize
- Means to expurgate from a work any passages considered indecent or indelicate.
- satire
- Text that reveals a critical attitude toward some element of human behavior by portraying it in an extreme way. meant to improve society through humor
- litotes
- Assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary. Example: "He's not the brightest man in the world," meaning "he is stupid."
- double entendre
- The term is used to indicate a word or phrase that is deliberately ambiguous, especially when one of the meanings is risqué or improper.
- aphorism
- a short clever saying parting truth.
- chiasmus
- Arrangement of repeated thoughts in the pattern of X Y Y X.
- conventional
- Following certain traditional techniques of writing.
- asyndeton
- Sentence where commas are used with no conjunctions to separate a series of words.
- elegaic
- longing for the past
- rhetoric
- The art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse.
- purple patch
- Signifies a sudden heightening of rhythm, diction, and figurative language that makes a section of verse or prose—especially a descriptive passage—stand out from its context.
- allusion
- A reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage.
- naturalistic novel
- extended fictional literature centering upon nature and excluding supernatural or spiritual elements, with special attention to effects of environment and heredity on human nature and action
- straw man
- Argues against a claim that nobody actually holds or is universally considered weak; diverts attention from the real issues
- new journalism
- Features author's subjective responses to people and events covered in essay.
- signal words
- Words in an essay that alert the reader to a change in tone, direction, section, or category.
- ad hominem
- Attacking the person instead of the argument proposed by that individual
- soliloquy
- aka monologue
- post hoc ergo propter hoc
- When a writer implies that because one thing follows another, the first caused the second.
- emotional appeal
- Appealing to the emotions of the reader in order to excite and involve them in the argument.
- hyperbole
- A bold overstatement or extravagant expression of fact, used for serious or comic effect.
- symbol
- An object, place, setting, prop, event or person that represents or stands for some idea or event; never hidden, but interwoven throughout text
- paean
- Any song of joy, praise or triumph.
- assonance
- Repetition of a vowel sound within two or more words, usually with different consonant sounds either before or after the same vowel sounds.
- theme
- Central idea of a work of fiction or nonfiction; an opinion developed; Revealed and developed in the course of a story or explored through argument.
- polysyndeton
- Sentence that uses and or other conjunctions multiple times with no commas to separate items in a series.
- epigram
- Poem is polished, condensed, and pointed, often with a witty end.
- vehicle
- secondary subject (simile) of an epic simile
- pathos
- A quality in an experience, narrative, literary work, etc., which arouses profound feelings of compassion or sorrow.
- structural irony
- serves to sustain duplicity of meaning throughout the text
- diacope
- Repetition of a word with one or more in-between, usually to express deep feeling.
- satiric
- witty, sarcasm
- appositive
- Nonessential word groups (phrases and clauses) that follow nouns and identify or explain them.
- syllogism
- A form of argument or reasoning, consisting of two premises and a conclusion.
- syntactic permutation
- Sentence structures that are extraordinarily complex and involved; wordiness beyond effectiveness
- anaphora
- Repetition of a word, phrase or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.
- anecdotal
- description, story, episode
- either-or reasoning
- Reducing an argument or issue to two polar opposites and ignoring any alternatives.
- tone
- Author's attitude toward subject matter as revealed through style, syntax, diction, figurative language, and organization.
- mood
- The atmosphere in the text created by the author's tone towards the subject.
- common knowledge
- Shared beliefs or assumptions between the reader and the audience.
- bathos
- A sudden drop from the sublime or elevated to the ludicrous.
- melodramatic redundancy
- "unnecessary repetition that is exaggerated, sensational and overly dramatic."
- polysyndeton
- Stresses equally each member of the series; slows the flow of a sentence for effect
- epic simile
- Formal and sustained similes that are developed far beyond its specific points of parallel to the primary subject.
- tautology
- The repetition, within the immediate context, of the same word or phrase or the same meaning in different words; usually as a fault of style.
- dramatic irony
- Involves a situation in a play or narrative in which the audience shares with the author knowledge of which the character is ignorant.
- tricolon
- "Out of its wild disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the modesty of most of its people."
- situational irony
- When the writer shows a discrepancy between the expected results of some action or situation and it actual results.
- diatribe
- A bitter and abusive speech or writing. Ironical or satirical criticism.
- metonymy
- A figure of speech where the term for one thing is applied for another with which it has become closely associated in experience, or where a part represents the whole.
- epigraph
- A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme of the fiction or nonfiction text.
- style
- The choices in diction, tone, syntax that a writer makes.
- monologue
- A long speech by one person; a dramatic speech by one actor.
- meditative
- contemplative
- antithesis
- A balancing of two opposite or contrasting words, phrases or clauses.
- refrain
- A line, or part of a line, or a group of lines which is repeated in the course of a poem or an essay.
- simile
- A figure of speech, comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison (like, as, or than, for example).
- tricolon
- Sentence consisting of three parts of equal importance and length.
- ethical appeal
- When a writer tries to persuade the audience to respect him or her based upon a presentation of self through the text.
- diction
- Refers to word choice as a reflection of style.
- aside
- short soliloquy
- epiphany
- "manifestation" of God's presence in the world
- verbal irony
- demands the most audience sophistication. This requires "reading between the lines."
- sentimentalism
- What is perceived as an excess of emotion to an occasion.
- metaphor
- A figure of speech that compares two things which are basically dissimilar. (Example: The ship plowed the sea.)
- analogy
- A comparison made between two things that may initially seem to have little in common but can offer fresh insights when compared.
- oxymoron
- A figure of speech in which two contradictory words are placed side-by-side for effect.
- red herring
- When a writer raises an irrelevant issue to draw attention away from the real issue.
- versimilitude
- The achievement of an illusion of reality in the audience. This is one of the "three unities" of Italian and French drama: unity of place, unity of time, and unity of truth (the drama must have a sense of reality and believability in the audience). appearance of truth
- novelette/novella
- fictional narrative of middle length
- periodic
- Sentence that places the main idea or central complete thought at the end of the sentence, after all introductory elements.
- amorous
- sexual love
- bombast
- Adopted to signify verbose and inflated diction that is disproportionate to the matter it expresses.
- anecdote
- A brief recounting of a relevant episode.
- synecdoche
- A part of something is used to signify the whole, or more rarely, a whole signifies a part
- parody
- Imitates the serious materials and manner of a particular work, or the characteristic style of a particular author, and applies it to a lowly or grossly discordant subject.
- anticlimax
- An event (as at the end of a series) that is strikingly less important than what has preceded it.
- archetype
- character types, or images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as myths, and even ritualized modes of social behavior.
- freight-train
- Sentence consisting three or more very short independent clauses joined by conjunctions.
- equivoque
- Special type of pun that makes use of a single word or phrase which has two disparate meanings, in a context which makes both meanings equally relevant.
- parallelism
- Sentence construction which places in close proximity two or more equal grammatical constructions.
- verbal irony
- Might be simple reversal of literal meanings of words spoken or more complex, subtle, indirect and unobtrusive messages that require the collection of hints from within the text.
- irony
- Originated in Greek comedy with the character eiron, who was a "dissembler." Greek dramatist Sophocles developed it
- coin a verb
- changing nouns to verbs, making verbs adjectives, making new combination of words paired together
- adverbial phrase
- a group of words that modifies, as a single unit, a verb, verb form, adjective or another adverb.
- deconstruction
- A critical approach that debunks single definitions of meaning based upon the instability of language.
- consonance
- Repetition of a consonant sound within two or more words in close proximity.
- exposition
- Background information provided by author to enhance the audience's understanding of the context of a fiction or nonfiction story.
- allegory
- A fiction or nonfiction narrative, in which characters, things, and events represent qualities, moral values, or concepts.
- refutation
- The art of mustering relevant opposing arguments.
- ethos
- The essential identity of an institution or system or a written work.
- syntactic fluency
- Ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length.
- pun
- A play on words that are either identical in sound (homonyms) or similar in sound, but are sharply diverse in meaning.
- imagery
- Use of images, especially in a pattern of related images, often figurative, to create a strong, unified sensory impression.
- euphemism
- to speak well in the place of the blunt, disagreeable, terrifying or offensive term.
- didactic
- Fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking.
- inversion
- Variation of the normal word order (subject, verb, complement) which puts the verb or complement at the head of the sentence.
- ethos
- The characteristic spirit or prevalent tone of a people or a community or that of the author in an essay.
- ethos
- person's character or disposition