Definitions, examples, and etymologies of literary terms

Poetry measured by the number of stressed syllables per line, regardless of how many unstressed syllables surround them.

Beowulf: each half-line carries four stresses, regardless of syllable count.

A poem in which the initial letters of each line, read vertically, spell out a word, name, or message.

Each line begins E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H to honour the addressee — a Renaissance tribute device.

An extended narrative in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract ideas or moral qualities beyond the literal story.

Spenser's The Faerie Queene: knights personify virtues such as Holiness and Chastity.

The repetition of the same initial consonant sound in closely connected words, creating sonic cohesion.

'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.'

An indirect reference to a person, place, event, or work of art that enriches meaning without explicit explanation.

'He was a real Romeo with the ladies' — invoking Shakespeare's character to imply ardent romanticism.

The deliberate use of language that sustains multiple interpretations simultaneously, creating depth and resonance.

Keats' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" — the equation yields philosophical, aesthetic, and circular readings at once.

A metrical foot of three syllables: unstressed-stressed-unstressed (u — u), giving a rocking, wave-like rhythm.

'a-LIV-ing', 'be-LONG-ing', 're-MEM-ber' — each an amphibrachic unit.

A metrical foot of three syllables: stressed-unstressed-stressed (— u —), also called the cretic foot.

'Catch a breath', 'bright as day' — stressed on both outer syllables.

A figure in which the last word or phrase of one clause or line is repeated at the start of the next.

'We shall not flag or fail. To fail is not in our nature.'

A rearrangement of the letters of a word or phrase to produce another meaningful word or phrase.

'Listen' rearranges to 'silent' — a pairing poets exploit to suggest hidden connections.

An explicit comparison between two things that clarifies or explains one by reference to the other.

'Life is like a journey: you choose the road, but not always the weather.'

A metrical foot of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (u u —), producing a galloping rhythm.

Byron's 'The Destruction of Sennacherib': 'The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.'

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines, clauses, or stanzas for rhetorical and musical effect.

'We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields…' (Churchill)

Inversion of the normal word order for rhetorical emphasis or metrical convenience.

Keats: 'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold' — object placed before subject and verb.

A sudden drop from the serious or elevated to the trivial or absurd, used for comic or critical effect.

Pope: 'Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, / Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.'

The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas, often arranged in parallel grammatical structures.

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' (Dickens, opening of A Tale of Two Cities)

Substituting a proper name with a descriptive title, or using a proper name as a common noun.

'The Bard' for Shakespeare; 'a Casanova' for any charming seducer; 'a Machiavelli' for a schemer.

A terse, memorable statement of a general truth or principle, shaped by rhythmic compression.

'To err is human; to forgive, divine.' (Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism)

Direct address to an absent, dead, abstract, or inanimate entity as though it were present and capable of response.

'O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind.' (Everyman, medieval morality play)

The deliberate use of outdated or old-fashioned words to evoke an earlier era or heightened solemnity.

'Thee,' 'thou,' 'doth,' 'hath,' 'methinks' — poetic archaisms evoking Elizabethan or biblical authority.

The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in nearby words, creating internal rhyme or melodic texture.

'The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.' — the long /eɪ/ sound recurs throughout.

The omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses, creating a rapid, compressed rhythm.

'I came, I saw, I conquered.' (Julius Caesar) — three verbs without 'and' or 'then.'

A lyric poem or song lamenting the parting of lovers at dawn, contrasting love's joy with the day's cruel intrusion.

Donne's 'The Sun Rising': 'Busy old fool, unruly sun, / Why dost thou thus / Through windows and through curtains call on us?'

A narrative poem, often of folk origin, typically with short stanzas and a refrain and intended for singing.

'Lord Randal', 'Barbara Allen' — anonymous ballads with dramatic story and ABCB rhyme scheme.

A quatrain rhyming ABCB, alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, the standard unit of the folk ballad.

'There lived a wife at Usher's Well, / And a wealthy wife was she; / She had three stout and stalwart sons…'

An abrupt, jarring descent from the elevated to the trivial, used deliberately for satirical or comic purposes.

Pope's mock-heroic couplet: '…and sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.'

Unrhymed iambic pentameter — the dominant metre of English dramatic poetry, epic, and much meditative verse.

Shakespeare: 'To be, or not to be, that is the question: / Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer…'

A catalog poem enumerating a beloved's physical attributes item by item, conventionally from head to foot.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 parodies the genre: 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun…'

A ballad printed on a single sheet (broadside) for popular sale and communal singing, especially in early modern England.

'The Ballad of Captain Kidd' — a broadside narrating a pirate's trial and execution.

A comic literary mode that treats a serious subject trivially or a trivial subject with mock grandeur.

Byron's Don Juan treats epic adventure with sustained irony and comic digression.

The deliberate use of harsh, discordant sounds to create an unpleasant auditory effect mirroring tension or violence.

'The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!' (Carroll, Jabberwocky) — hard consonants enact the creature's menace.

A pause within a line of verse, created by syntax, punctuation, or sense, dividing the line into two hemistichs.

'To err is human; || to forgive, divine.' (Pope) — the semicolon marks a medial caesura.

A Latin thematic motif — 'seize the day' — urging enjoyment of present pleasures against the certainty of death.

Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress': 'Had we but world enough and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime.'

The strained or unusual application of a word — a mixed metaphor or an extension beyond normal usage.

'To take arms against a sea of troubles.' (Hamlet) — 'arms' and 'sea' create a mixed but powerful image.

The omission of one or more unstressed syllables at the end of a line, making it metrically incomplete.

A catalectic iambic tetrameter ends with a stressed syllable only: 7 syllables instead of 8.

A rhetorical figure in which the grammatical structures of two successive clauses are reversed (A-B / B-A).

'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.' (JFK, 1961)

A humorous four-line biographical verse about a named person, rhyming AABB with deliberately irregular metre.

'Sir Humphry Davy / Abominated gravy. / He lived in the odium / Of having discovered sodium.'

The use of informal, conversational diction in poetry to create naturalness, immediacy, or social authenticity.

Robert Frost's conversational tone in 'The Road Not Taken' masks philosophical complexity in plain speech.

An elaborate, extended metaphor that draws a surprising or ingenious comparison between apparently unlike things.

Donne's 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning': separated lovers' souls compared to the two legs of a draughtsman's compass.

Poetry in which the visual arrangement, shape, or typography of the text on the page constitutes part of the meaning.

e.e. cummings' poems use unconventional spacing and capitalisation; Apollinaire's Calligrammes shape words into pictures.

A mode of poetry, prominent mid-20th century, that draws directly on the poet's own traumatic or private experience.

Sylvia Plath's Ariel (1965); Anne Sexton's Live or Die (1966); Robert Lowell's Life Studies (1959).

The emotional, cultural, or associative meanings a word carries beyond its literal dictionary definition.

'Snake' denotes a reptile; it connotes treachery, temptation, danger (Genesis, classical myth).

The repetition of consonant sounds within or at the end of nearby words, regardless of vowel sounds.

'Pitter patter' — repeated /t/ and /r/ sounds; 'all mammals named Sam are clammy' — /m/ recurs.

Two successive lines of poetry that rhyme and generally form a self-contained unit of meaning.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ends: 'So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

A metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (— u u), giving a falling, galloping rhythm.

'MErrily, MErrily, MErrily, MErrily, life is but a DREAM.' — dactylic pattern.

The literal, dictionary definition of a word — its primary, referential meaning stripped of emotional association.

'Home' denotes a dwelling place; it connotes warmth, belonging, safety.

The selection and arrangement of words in a poem — the level of vocabulary (formal, colloquial, archaic, technical) that shapes voice and tone.

Milton's Latinate diction elevates Paradise Lost: 'Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song / That with no middle flight intends to soar.'

Poetry whose primary aim is to instruct, teach, or morally edify the reader, rather than to express emotion or tell a story.

Hesiod's Works and Days (8th c. BC); Pope's Essay on Man (1734); Virgil's Georgics.

A line of verse consisting of exactly two metrical feet.

'Baa, baa, black sheep' — two trochaic feet; common in hymns, songs, and children's verse.

A short, mournful lyric lamenting the dead, simpler and more compressed than an elegy.

Ariel's song in The Tempest: 'Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made.'