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A
Abecedarian poem - A poem having
verses beginning with the successive letters of the
alphabet.
Abstract Language – Words that represent ideas,
intangibles, and concepts such as “beauty” and
“truth.”
Abstract Poetry - Poetry that aims to use its sounds,
textures, rhythms, and rhymes to convey an emotion,
instead of relying on the meanings of words.
Academic Verse – Poetry that adheres to the
accepted standards and requirements of some kind of
“school.” Poetry approved, officially, or
unofficially, by a literary establishment.
Acatalectic - A verse having the metrically complete
number of syllables in the final foot.
Accent - The rhythmically significant stress in the
articulation of words, giving some syllables more
relative prominence than others. In words of two or more
syllables, one syllable is almost invariably stressed
more strongly than the other syllables. In words of one
syllable, the degree of stress normally depends on their
grammatical function; nouns, verbs, and adjectives are
usually given more stress than articles or prepositions.
The words in a line of poetry are usually arranged so the
accents occur at regular intervals, with the meter
defined by the placement of the accents within the foot.
Accent should not be construed as emphasis.
Accentual Meter – A rhythmic pattern based on a
recurring number of accents or stresses in each line of a
poem or section of a poem.
Acephalexis - initial truncation (the dropping of the
first, unstressed syllable at the beginning of a line of
iambic or anapestic verse).
Acrostic - a poem in which the first letter of each
line spells out a name (downwards).
Adonic - A verse consisting of a dactyl
followed by a spondee or trochee.
Adynaton - A type of hyperbole in which the
exaggeration is magnified so greatly that it refers to an
impossibility, as "I'd walk a million miles for one
of your smiles."
Afflatus - A creative inspiration, as that of a poet;
a divine imparting of knowledge, thus it is often called divine
afflatus.
Alcaic verse - A Greek lyrical meter, said to be
invented by Alcaeus, a lyric poet from about 600 B.C.
Written in tetrameter, the greater Alcaic consists
of a spondee or iamb followed by an iamb plus a long
syllable and two dactyls. The lesser Alcaic, also
in tetrameter, consists of two dactylic feet followed by
two iambic feet.
Alexandrine - An iambic line of twelve syllables, or
six feet, usually with a caesura after the sixth
syllable. It is the standard line in French poetry,
comparable to the iambic pentameter line in English
poetry.
Allegory - A figurative illustration of truths or
generalizations about human conduct or experience in a
narrative or description by the use of symbolic fictional
figures and actions which resemble the subject's
properties and circumstances.
Alliteration - the repetition of the consonant sounds
within words or within lines.
Allusion - An implied or indirect reference to
something assumed to be known, such as an historical
event or personage, a well-known quotation from
literature, or a famous work of art.
Amphibrach - A metrical foot consisting of a long or
accented syllable between two short or unaccented
syllables.
Amphigouri - A verse composition, while apparently
coherent, contains no sense or meaning.
Anachronism - The placement of an event, person, or
thing out of its proper chronological relationship,
sometimes unintentional, but often deliberate as an
exercise of poetic license.
Anaclasis - The substitution of different measures to
break up the rhythm.
Anacreontic - A poem in the style of the Greek poet,
Anacreon, convivial in tone or theme, relating to the
praise of love and wine.
Anacrusis - when one or more unstressed syllables are
added at the beginning of a line.
nagoge or Anagogy - The spiritual or mystical
interpretation of a word or passage beyond the literal,
allegorical or moral sense.
Analogy - An agreement or similarity in some
particulars between things otherwise different; sleep
and death, for example, are analogous in that they
both share a lack of animation and a recumbent posture.
Anapest - a metrical foot composed of two weaker
syllables followed by a stronger, (or 'stressed')
syllable.
Anaphora - the repetition of an opening word or
phrase in throughout a number of lines.
Anastrophe - A type of hyperbaton involving the
inversion of the natural or usual syntactical order of a
pair of words for rhetorical or poetic effect.
Antanaclasis - A figure of speech in which the same
word is repeated in a different sense within a clause or
line.
Anthology - A collection of selected literary,
artistic, or musical works or parts of works.
Antibacchius - A metrical foot consisting of two long
syllables followed by a short syllable.
Anticlimax - The intentional use of elevated language
to describe the trivial or commonplace, or a sudden
transition from a significant thought to a trivial one in
order to achieve a humorous or satiric effect.
Antiphrasis - The ironic or humorous use of words in
a sense not in accord with their literal meaning, as in
"a giant of three feet four inches."
Antispast - A metrical foot consisting of two long
syllables between two short syllables.
Antistrophe - The second division in the triadic
structure of Pindaric verse, corresponding metrically to
the strophe; also, the stanza following or alternating
with and responding to the strophe in ancient lyric
poetry.
Antithesis - A figure of speech in which a thought is
balanced with a contrasting thought in parallel
arrangements of words and phrases.
Antonomasia - The use of a name, epithet or title in
place of a proper name, as Bard for Shakespeare.
Antonym - One of two or more words that have opposite
meanings.
Aphaeresis or apheresis - A type of elision in which
a letter or syllable is omitted at the beginning of a
word, as 'twas for it was.
Aphesis - A form of aphaeresis in which the
syllable omitted is short and unaccented, as in round
for around.
Aphorism - A brief statement containing an important
truth or fundamental principle.
Apocope - A type of elision in which a letter or
syllable is omitted at the end of a word, as in morn
for morning.
Apologue - An allegorical narrative, usually intended
to convey a moral or a useful truth.
Aposiopesis - Stopping short of a complete thought
for effect, thus calling attention to it, usually by a
sudden breaking off, as in "He acted like--but I
pretended not to notice," leaving the unsaid portion
to the reader's imagination.
Apostrophe - A figure of speech in which an address
is made to an absent person or a personified thing
rhetorically.
Arcadia - A region or scene characterized by idyllic
quiet and simplicity, often chosen as a setting for
pastoral poetry.
Archaism - A word or expression no longer in general
use, for example, thou mayst is an archaism
meaning, "you may."
Argument - The subject matter or central theme of a
work of literature or a summary of the work, often used
as a prologue to a drama, epic, or narrative.
Arsis - The accented or longer part of a poetic foot;
the point where an ictus is put.
Assonance - The relatively close juxtaposition of the
same or similar vowel sounds, but with different end
consonants in a line or passage, thus a vowel rhyme, as
in the words, date and fade.
Asyndeton - The omission of conjunctions that
ordinarily join coordinate words and phrases, as in
"see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."
Aubade - A song or poem with a motif of greeting the
dawn, often involving the parting of lovers, or a call
for a beloved to arise.
Avant – Garde - The innovating artists or
writers who promote the use of new or experimental
concepts or techniques.
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B
Bacchius - In ancient poetry, a metrical foot
consisting of a short syllable followed by two long
syllables.
Ballad - A short narrative poem with stanzas of two
or four lines and usually a refrain. The story of a
ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter
but most frequently deals with folklore or popular
legends. They are written in straightforward verse,
seldom with detail, but always with graphic simplicity
and force. Most ballads are suitable for singing and,
while sometimes varied in practice, are generally written
in ballad meter, i.e., alternating lines of iambic
tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the last words of
the second and fourth lines rhyming.
Ballade - Frequently represented in French poetry, a
fixed form consisting of three seven or eight-line
stanzas using no more than three recurrent rhymes with an
identical refrain after each stanza and a closing envoi
repeating the rhymes of the last four lines of the
stanza. A variation containing six stanzas is called a double
ballade.
Baroque - An elaborate, extravagantly complex,
sometimes grotesque, style of artistic expression
prevalent in the late sixteenth to early eighteenth
centuries. The baroque influence on poetry was expressed
by Euphuism in England, Marinism in Italy, and Gongorism
in Spain.
Bathos - An unintentional shift from the sublime to
the ridiculous which can result from the use of overly
elevated language to describe trivial subject matter, or
from an exaggerated attempt at pathos which misfires to
the point of being ludicrous. Bathos can be viewed as an
unintentional anticlimax.
Blank verse - Poetry written without rhymes, but
which retains a set metrical pattern, usually iambic
pentameter (or five iambic feet per line) in English
verse. Since it is a very flexible form, the writer not
being hampered in the expression of thought or syntactic
structure by the need to rhyme, it is used extensively in
narrative and dramatic poetry. In lyric poetry, blank
verse is adaptable to lengthy descriptive and meditative
poems.
Bouts-Rimes - An 18th century parlor game in which a
list of rhyming words was drawn up and handed to the
players, who had to make a poem from the list keeping the
rhymes in their original order.
Broadside Ballad – A ballad written in doggerel,
printed on a single sheet of paper and sold for a penny
or two on English street corners in the late 16th and
early 17th centuries. The name of the tune to which they
were to be sung was indicated on the sheet. The subject
matter of broadside ballads covered a wide range of
current, historical or simply curious events and also
extended to moral exhortations and religious propaganda.
Broken Rhyme - Also called split rhyme, a rhyme
produced by dividing a word at the line break to make a
rhyme with the end word of another line.
Bucolic - Derived from the Greek word for herdsman,
an ancient term for a poem dealing with a pastoral
subject.
Burden - The central topic or principle idea, often
repeated in a refrain.
Burlesque - A work which is intended to ridicule by
the use of grotesque exaggeration or by the treatment of
a trifling subject with the gravity due a matter of great
importance.
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c
Cacophony - Discordant sounds in the jarring
juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables, sometimes
inadvertent, but often deliberately used in poetry for
effect.
Cadence - The progressive rhythmical pattern in lines
of verse; also, the natural tone or modulation of the
voice determined by the alternation of accented or
unaccented syllables.
Caesura - A rhythmic break or pause in the flow of
sound which is commonly introduced in about the middle of
a line of verse, but may be varied for different effects.
Usually placed between syllables rhythmically connected
in order to aid the recital as well as to convey the
meaning more clearly, it is a pause dictated by the sense
of the content or by natural speech patterns, rather than
by metrics. It may coincide with conventional
punctuation marks, but not necessarily. A caesura within
a line is indicated in scanning by the symbol (||).
Canon - In a literary sense, the authoritative works
of a particular writer; also, an accepted list of works
perceived to represent a cultural, ideological,
historical, or biblical grouping.
Canto - A major division of a long or extended poem.
A canto of a poem corresponds to a chapter of a novel.
Canzone - A medieval Italian or Provençal lyric poem
of varying stanzaic form, usually with a concluding short
stanza or envoi.
Carmina Figurata/Figuratum - See Pattern Poetry
Carpe Diem - Latin for "seize the day," a
common motif in lyric verse throughout the history of
poetry, with the emphasis on making the most of current
pleasures because life is short and time is flying.
Catachresis - Misuse or abuse of words; the use of
the wrong word for the context, as atone for repent,
ingenuous for ingenious, or a forced trope in
which a word is used too far removed from its true
meaning, as "loud aroma" or "velvet
beautiful to the touch."
Catalectic/Catalexis - Metrically incomplete;
the dropping of one or two unaccented syllables from the
end of a line, thus ending with an incomplete foot.
Catalog Verse - A poem comprised of a list of
persons, places, things, or abstract ideas which share a
common denominator. An ancient form, it was originally a
type of didactic poetry.
Cataphora - The use of a grammatical substitute (like
a pronoun) which has the same reference as the next word
or phrase.
Caudate Ryhme – See tail rhyme
Cento - Poetry made up of lines borrowed from a
combination of established authors, usually resulting in
a change in meaning and a humorous effect.
Chain Rhyme - Also called interlocking rhyme,
a rhyme scheme in which a rhyme in a line of one stanza
is used as a link to a rhyme in the next stanza, as in
the aba bcb cdc, etc. of terza rima or the aaab
cccb
Chain Verse - Similar to chain rhyme, but links
words, phrases, or lines (instead of rhyme) by repeating
them in succeeding stanzas, as in the pantoum, but there
are many variations.
Chanson De Geste - Literally, a song of heroic deeds,
it refers to a class of Old French epic poems of the
Middle Ages.
Chant Royal - An elaborate form of ballade in
old French poetry, consisting of five stanzas of eleven
lines, an envoi of eight lines, and five rhymes. The
rhyme scheme is usually ababccddede.
Chapbook - A small book or pamphlet containing
ballads, poems, popular tales or tracts, etc.
Chaucerian Stanza - See Rhyme Royal
Chiasmus - An inverted parallelism; the reversal of
the order of corresponding words or phrases (with or
without exact repetition) in successive clauses, which
are usually parallel in syntax.
Choriamb - In ancient poetry, a metrical foot
consisting of four syllables, the first two forming a trochee
and the second two an iambus.
Choric Ode – See Pindaric Verse
Cinquain - A five-line stanza of syllabic verse, the
successive lines containing two, four, six, eight and two
syllables. The cinquain, based on the Japanese haiku,
was an innovation of the American poet, Adelaide Crapsey.
Classicism - The adherence to traditional standards
that are universally valid and enduring.
Cliche - well worn or tired phrase
Clerihew - A comic light verse, two couplets in
length, rhyming aabb, usually dealing with a
person mentioned in the initial rhyme.
Climax - Rhetorically, a series of words, phrases, or
sentences arranged in a continuously ascending order of
intensity. If the ascending order is not maintained, an
anticlimax or bathos results.
Closed Couplet - A couplet in which the sense and
syntax is self-contained within its two lines, as opposed
to an open couplet.
Close Rhyme - A rhyme of two contiguous or close
words, such as in the idiomatic expressions, "true
blue" or "fair and square."
Closet Drama - A literary work written in the form of
a drama, but intended by the author only for reading, not
for performance in the theater.
Closure - The effect of finality, balance, and
completeness which leaves the reader with a sense of
fulfilled expectations. Though the term is sometimes
employed to describe the effects of individual repetitive
elements, such as rhyme, metrical patterns, parallelism,
refrains, and stanzas, its most significant application
is in reference to the concluding portion of the entire
poem.
Common Measure - A meter consisting chiefly of seven
iambi feet arranged in rhymed pairs, thus a line with
four accents followed by a line with three accents,
usually in a four-line stanza. It is also called common
meter.
Companion Poem - A poem that is associated with
another, which it complements.
Conceit - An elaborate metaphor, often strained or
far-fetched, in which the subject is compared with a
simpler analogue usually chosen from nature or a familiar
context.
Concrete Poetry - Poetry which forms a structurally
original visual shape, preferably abstract, through the
use of reduced language, fragmented letters, symbols and
other typographical variations to create an extreme
graphic impact on the reader's attention. The essence of
concrete poetry lies in its appearance on the page rather
than in the written text; it is intended to be perceived
as a visual whole and often cannot be effective when read
aloud.
Connotation - The suggestion of a meaning by a word
beyond what it explicitly denotes or describes. The word,
home, for example, means the place where one
lives, but by connotation, also suggests security,
family, love and comfort.
Consonance - A pleasing combination of sounds; sounds
in agreement with tone. Also, the close repetition of the
same end consonants of stressed syllables with differing
vowel sounds.
Content - The substance of a poem; the impressions,
facts and ideas it contains--the
"what-is-being-said."
Controlling Metaphor - a symbolic story, where the
whole poem may be a metaphor for something else.
Conventions - In a literary sense, established
"codes" of basic principles and procedures for
types of works that are recurrent in literature. The
prevailing conventions of their time strongly influence
writers to select content, forms, style, diction, etc.,
which is acceptable to the cultural expectations of the
public.
Couplet - Two successive lines of poetry, usually of
equal length and rhythmic correspondence, with end-words
that rhyme. The couplet, for practical purposes, is the
shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other
couplets to form a poem with no stanzaic divisions.
Courtly Love - A late medieval idealized convention
establishing a code for the conduct of amorous affairs of
ladies and their lovers. Expressed and spread by the minnesingers
and troubadours, it became associated with the
literary concept of love until the 19th century.
Crambo - A game in which one player gives a word or
line of verse to be matched in rhyme by the other
players.
Cretic - Used in ancient poetry, a metrical foot
consisting of a short syllable between two long
syllables, as in thirty-nine.
Criticaster - An inferior or petty critic.
Cross Rhyme - A rhyme scheme of abab, also
called alternate rhyme. The term derives from
long-line verse such as hexameter in which two lines have
caesural words rhymed together and end words rhymed
together, as in Swinburne's.
Cycle - The aggregate of accumulated literature,
plays or musical works treating the same theme. In
poetry, the term is typically applied to epic or
narrative poems about a mythical or heroic event or
character.
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D
Dactyl or Dactylic - A metrical foot of three
syllables, the first of which is long or accented and the
next two short or unaccented.
Dadaism - A short-lived WWI European movement in arts
and literature based on deliberate irrationality and the
negation of traditional artistic values.
Decameter - A line of verse consisting of ten
metrical feet.
Decasyllable - A metrical line of ten syllables or a
poem composed of ten-syllable lines.
Denotation - The literal dictionary meaning(s) of a
word as distinct from an associated idea or connotation.
Diacope - See Epizeuxis
Diaeresis or Dieresis – The pronunciation of two
adjacent vowels as separate sounds rather than as a
dipthong, as in coordinate; also, the mark
indicating the separate pronunciation, as in naïve.
Dibrach - See Pyrrhic
Diction - The choice of words, phrases, sentence
structures, and figurative language in a literary work;
the manner or mode of verbal expression, particularly
with regard to clarity and accuracy.
Didactic Poetry - Poetry which is clearly intended
for the purpose of instruction -- to impart theoretical,
moral, or practical knowledge, or to explain the
principles of some art or science.
Diiamb or Diamb - In ancient poetry, a metrical foot
consisting of four syllables, with the first and third
short and the second and fourth long, i.e., two iambs
considered as a single foot.
Dimeter - A line of verse consisting of two metrical
feet, or of two dipodies.
Diphthong - the sound formed by two merged vowels,
highly prevalent in English, eg the vowel sounds of
'loud', 'new', 'why'
Dipody or Dipodic Verse - A double foot; a unit of
two feet.
Dirge - A poem of grief or lamentation, especially
one intended to accompany funeral or memorial rites.
Dispondee - In ancient poetry, a metrical foot
consisting of four long syllables, equivalent to a double
spondee.
Dissonance - A mingling or union of harsh,
inharmonious sounds which are grating to the ear.
Distich - A strophic unit of two lines; a pair of
poetic lines or verses which together comprise a complete
sense.
Disyllable - A word of two syllables.
Disyllabic Rhyme - A rhyme in which two final
syllables of words have the same sound.
Dithyramb - In classic poetry, a type of melic verse
associated with drunken revelry and performed to honor of
Dionysus (Bacchus), the Greek god of wine and ecstacy. In
modern usage, the term has come to mean a poem of
impassioned frenzy and irregular character.
Ditty - A little poem meant to be sung.
Dochmius or Dochmii - In ancient Greek prosody,
a metrical foot consisting of five syllables, the first
and fourth being short and the second, third and fifth
long.
Dodecasyllable - A metrical line of twelve
syllables.
Doggerel - Originally applied to poetry of loose
irregular measure, it now is used to describe crudely
written poetry which lacks artistry in form or meaning.
Dorian Ode - See Pindaric Verse
Double Dactyl - A word with two dactyls, such as counterintelligence
or parliamentarian; also, a modern form of light
verse consisting of two quatrains with two dactyls per
line. The first line is a hyphenated nonsense word, often
"higgledy-piggledy;" the second line is a
proper name, and the sixth line is a single double dactyl
word. The fourth and eighth lines are truncated, lacking
the final two unaccented syllables, and rhyme with each
other.
Dramatic Monologue - A literary work which consists
of a revealing one-way conversation by a character or persona,
usually directed to a second person or to an imaginary
audience. It typically involves a critical moment of a
specific situation, with the speaker's words
unintentionally providing a revelation of his character.
Dramatic Poem - A composition in verse portraying a
story of life or character, usually involving conflict
and emotions, in a plot evolving through action and
dialogue.
Dysphemism - The substitution of a disagreeable,
offensive or disparaging expression to replace an
agreeable or inoffensive one.
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E
Echo - The repetition of particular sounds,
syllables, words or lines in poetry.
Echo Verse - A form of poem in which a word or two at
the end of a line appears as an echo constituting the
entire following line. The echo, either the same word or
syllable or a homophone, often changes the meaning in a
flippant, cynical or punning response.
Eclogue - A pastoral poem, usually containing
dialogue between shepherds.
Edda - Either of two collections of mythological,
heroic and aphoristic Icelandic poetry from the 12th and
13th centuries.
Eidillion or Eidyllion – See Idyll
Ekphrasis or Ecphrasis - In modern usage, the vivid
literary description of a specific work of art, such as a
painting, sculpture, tapestry, church, and the like.
Originally, the term more broadly applied to a
description in words of any experience, person, or thing.
Elegiac - A dactylic hexameter couplet, with the
second line having only an unaccented syllable in the
third and sixth feet; also, of or relating to the period
in Greece when elegies written in such couplets
flourished, about the seventh century B.C.; also,
relating to an elegy.
Elegiac Stanza - See Heroic Quatrain
Elegy - A poem of lament, usually formal and
sustained, over the death of a particular person; also, a
meditative poem in plaintive or sorrowful mood.
Elision - The omission of a letter or syllable as a
means of contraction, generally to achieve a uniform
metrical pattern, but sometimes to smooth the
pronunciation; most such omissions are marked with an
apostrophe. Specific types of elision include aphaeresis,
apocope, syncope, synaeresis and synaloepha.
Ellipsis - The omission of a word or words necessary
to complete a grammatical construction, but which is
easily understood by the reader, such as "the
virtues I esteem" for "the virtues which
I esteem." Also, the marks (. . .) or (--) denoting
an omission or pause.
Emblem Poems – See Pattern Poetry
Empathy - The feeling or capacity for awareness,
understanding and sensitivity one experiences when
hearing or reading of some event or activity of another,
thus imagining the same sensation as that of those
actually experiencing it.
Emphasis - A deliberate stress of articulation on a
word or phrase so as to give an impression of particular
significance to it by the more marked pronunciation. In
writing, emphasis is indicated by the use of italics or
underlining.
Enallage - The effective use of a grammatically
incorrect part of speech in place of the correct form,
e.g., present tense in place of past tense, plural for
singular, etc.
Enargia – See under Ekphrasis
Encomium – A speech or composition in high
praise of a person, object or event.
End Rhyme - A rhyme occurring in the terminating word
or syllable of one line of poetry with that of another
line, as opposed to internal rhyme.
End-Stopped - Denoting a line of verse in which a
logical or rhetorical pause occurs at the end of the
line, usually marked with a period, comma, or semicolon.
Enjambment - The continuation of the sense and
therefore the grammatical construction beyond the end of
a line of verse or the end of a couplet.
Envelope - A poetic device in which a line, phrase,
or stanza is repeated so as to enclose other material.
Envoi or Envoy - A short final stanza of a poem,
especially a ballade or sestina, serving as a summary or
dedication -- like an author's postscript.
Epanadiplosis – See Anadiplosis
Epanalepsis - A figure of speech in which a word or
phrase is repeated after intervening matter.
Epanaphora – See Anaphora
Epic - An extended narrative poem, usually simple in
construction, but grand in scope, exalted in style, and
heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of
a nation or race.
Epigram - A pithy, sometimes satiric couplet or
quatrain which was popular in classic Latin literature
and in European and English literature of the Renaissance
and the neo-Classical era. Epigrams comprise a single
thought or event and are often aphoristic with a witty or
humorous turn of thought.
Epigraph - A quotation, or a sentence composed for
the purpose, placed at the beginning of a literary work
or one of its separate divisions, usually suggestive of
the theme.
Epinicion or Epinician or Epinikion - A song in
celebration of triumph; an ode in praise of a victory in
the Greek games or in war.
Epistrophe - Also called epiphora, the
repetition of a word or expression at the end of
successive phrases or verses.
Epitaph - A brief poem or statement in memory of
someone who is deceased, used as -- or suitable for -- a
tombstone inscription; a commemorative lamentation.
Epithalamium or Epithalamion - A nuptial song
or poem in honor of the bride and bridegroom.
Epithet - An adjective or adjectival phrase, usually
attached to the name of a person or thing.
Epitrite - A metrical foot consisting of three long
syllables and one short syllable, and denominated first,
second, third or fourth according to the
position of the short syllable.
Epizeuxis - A rhetorical device consisting of the
immediate repetition of a word or phrase for emphasis
Epode - A type of lyric poem in which a long verse is
followed by a shorter one, or the third and last part of
an ode; also, the third part of a triadic Greek poem or
Pindaric verse following the strophe and the antistrophe.
Epopee - An epic poem, or the history, action or
legend, which is the subject of an epic poem.
Epos - An epic poem; also a number of poems of an
epic theme but which are not formally united.
Epyllion - A brief narrative work in classic poetry
written in dactylic hexameter. It commonly dealt with
mythological themes, often with a romantic interest, and
was characterized by vivid description, scholarly
allusion, and an elevated tone.
Equivoke or Equivoque - An ambiguous word or phrase
capable more than one interpretation, thus susceptible to
use for puns.
Eulogy - A speech or writing in praise of the
character or accomplishments of a person.
Euphemism - The substitution of an agreeable or
inoffensive expression to replace one that might offend
or suggest something unpleasant, for example, "he is
at rest" is a euphemism for "he is dead."
Euphony - Harmony or beauty of sound which provides a
pleasing effect to the ear, usually sought-for in poetry
for effect. It is achieved not only by the selection of
individual word-sounds, but also by their relationship in
the repetition, proximity, and flow of sound patterns.
Euphuism - An ornate Elizabethan style of writing
marked by the excessive use of alliteration, antithesis
and mythological similes. The term derives from the
elaborate and affected style of John Lyly's 16th century
romance, Euphues.
Exact Rhyme – See Perfect Rhyme
Extended Metaphor - A metaphor which is drawn-out
beyond the usual word or phrase to extend throughout a
stanza or an entire poem, usually by using multiple
comparisons between the unlike objects or ideas.
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Fable - A poetic story that illustrates
a moral or teaches a lesson, usually in which animals or
inanimate objects are represented as characters.
Fabliau - A ribald and often cynical tale in verse,
especially popular in the Middle Ages.
Facetiae - Witty or humorous writings or remarks.
Fatal Flaw – See Hamartia
Feminine Ending - An extra unaccented syllable at the
end of an iambic or anapestic line of poetry, often used
in blank verse.
Feminine Rhyme - A rhyme occurring on an unaccented
final syllable, as in dining and shining or
motion and ocean. Feminine rhymes are
double or disyllabic rhymes and are common in the heroic
couplet.
Fescennine Verses - Poetry of a personal nature,
lacking moral or sexual restraints, commonly extemporized
at rustic weddings in Fescennia, Rome and other ancient
Italian cities.
Figurative Language - The use of words, phrases,
symbols, and ideas in such as way as to evoke mental
images and sense impressions. Figurative language is
often characterized by the use of figures of speech,
elaborate expressions, sound devices, and syntactic
departures from the usual order of literal language.
Figure of Speech - A mode of expression in which
words are used out of their literal meaning or out of
their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional
intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by
comparing or identifying one thing with another that has
a meaning familiar to the reader. Some important figures
of speech are: simile, metaphor, personification,
hyperbole and symbol.
Fit or Fytte - An archaic term for the division of a
poem, i.e., a stanza or canto.
Foot - A unit of rhythm or meter, the division in
verse of a group of syllables, one of which is long or
accented. For example, the line, "The boy | stood on
| the burn | ing deck," has four iambic metrical
feet. The fundamental components of the foot are the arsis
and the thesis. The most common poetic feet used
in English verse are the iamb, anapest, trochee,
dactyl and spondee, while in classical verse
there are 28 different feet. The other metrical feet are
the amphibrach, antibacchius, antispast, bacchius,
choriamb, cretic, diiamb, dispondee, dochmius, molossus,
proceleusmatic, pyrrhic and tribrach, plus two
variations of the ionic, four variations of the epitrite,
and four variations of the paeon. The structure of
a poetic foot does not necessarily correspond to word
divisions, but is determined in context by the feet which
surround it.
Form - The arrangement, manner or method used to
convey the content, such as free verse, ballad, haiku,
etc. In other words, the "way-it-is-said."
Found Poem - A poem created from prose found in a
non-poetic context, such as advertising copy, brochures,
newspapers, product labels, etc. The lines are
arbitrarily rearranged into a form patterned on the
rhythm and appearance of poetry.
Fourteener - An iambic line of fourteen syllables, or
seven feet, widely used in English poetry in the middle
of the 16th Century.
Free Verse - A fluid form which conforms to no set
rules of traditional versification. The free in
free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of
meter and rhyme, but writers of free verse employ
familiar poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration,
imagery, caesura, figures of speech etc., and their
rhythmic effects are dependent on the syllabic cadences
emerging from the context. The term is often used in its
French language form, vers libre.
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Galliambus - In classic poetry, a lyric meter
consisting of four iambic dipodies, the last of which is
catalectic, dropping the final accent, or a line of four
lesser Ionic feet catalectic, varied by anaclasis.
Genre - A category of artistic, musical or literary
composition characterized by a particular form, style or
content. Poetry, for example, is a literary genre.
Georgic - A poem dealing with a rural or agricultural
topic, but differing from pastoral poetry in that the
primary intention of a georgic is didactic.
Ghazal - A monorhymed Middle Eastern lyric poem in
which the first two lines rhyme with a corresponding
rhyme in the second line of each succeeding couplet, thus
a rhyme scheme of aa, ba, ca, etc.
Gleeman - An old English minstrel. Gleemen sometimes
composed their own verses, but often recited poetry
written by a scop.
Gnome - An aphorism, a short statement of proverbial
truth. Composers of such verse are known as gnomic poets.
Goliardic Poetry - Satiric verse which flourished in
the 12th and 13th centuries, usually consisting of a
stanza of four 13-syllable lines in feminine rhyme,
sometimes with a concluding hexameter. The satire was
characteristically a defiance of authority, most
particularly directed against the Church.
Gongorism - Named for the 17th century Spanish poet,
Luis de Gongora y Argote, a literary style characterized
by stilted obscurity and the use of affected devices of
embellishment.
Grave - In poetry, a mark ( ` ) indicating that the e
in the English ending ed is to be pronounced for
the sake of meter.
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Haiku - A Japanese form of poetry,
also known as hokku. It consists of three unrhymed
lines of five, seven and five syllables. The elusive
flavor of the form, however, lies more in its touch and
tone than in its syllabic structure. Deeply imbedded in
Japanese culture and strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism,
haiku are very brief descriptions of nature that convey
some implicit insight or essence of a moment.
Traditionally, they contain either a direct or oblique
reference to a season.
Half Rhyme - A near rhyme; also, an apocopated
rhyme in which the rhyme occurs only on the first
syllable of the rhyming word, as in blue and truly
or sum and trumpet.
Hamartia - In literature, the tragic hero's
error of judgement or inherent defect of character,
usually less literally translated as a "fatal
flaw." This, combined with essential elements of
chance and other external forces, brings about a
catastrophe. Often the error or flaw results from nothing
more than personal traits like probity, pride, and
overconfidence, but can arise from any failure of the
protagonist's action or knowledge ranging from a simple
unwittingness to a moral deficiency.
Head Rhyme – See Alliteration
Helicon - A part of the Parnassus, a mountain range
in Greece, which was the home of the Muses. The name is
used as an allusion to poetic inspiration.
Hemistich - The approximate half of a line of poetic
verse, usually divided by a caesura. In dramatic
poetry it is used whenever characters exchange short
bursts of dialogue rapidly, heightening the effect of
quarrelsome disagreement; in classical poetry such a
series is called hemistichomythia. Other types of
poetry may use an occasional hemistich to give the effect
of emotionally disturbed thought or action.
Hendecasyllable - A metrical line of eleven
syllables.
Hendiadys - The use of a pair of nouns joined by and
where one has the effect of a modifier.
Heptameter - A line of verse consisting of seven
metrical feet. It is also called a septenarius,
especially in Latin prosody.
Heroic Couplet - Two successive lines of rhymed
poetry in iambic pentameter, so called for its use in the
composition of epic poetry in the 17th and 18th
centuries. In neo-classical usage the two lines were
required to express a complete thought, thus a closed
couplet, with a subordinate pause at the end of the first
line. Heroic couplets, which are well-suited to
antithesis and parallelism, are also often used for
epigrams.
Heroic Quatrain or Heroic Verse - So named because it
is the form in which epic poetry of heroic exploits is
generally written, its rhyme scheme is abab,
composed in ten-syllable iambic verse in English,
hexameter in Greek and Latin, ottava rima in Italian.
Heterometric composition - a poem written in meter
but with lines of differing length, e.g. one line of
tetrameter, one of pentameter, one of dimeter etc.
Heteronym – See Homonym
Hexameter - A line of verse consisting of six
metrical feet; the term, however, is usually used for
dactylic hexameter, consisting of dactyls and spondees,
the meter in which the Greek and Latin epics were
written.
Hiatus – See Elision
Higgledy-Piggledy – See Double Dactyl
Homonym - One of two or more words which are
identical in pronunciation and spelling, but different in
meaning, as the noun bear and the verb bear.
Horatian Ode - An ode relating to or resembling the
works or style of the Roman poet, Horace, consisting of a
series of uniform stanzas, complex in their metrical
system and rhyme scheme. The Greek form is called an Aeolic
ode. Horatian odes are characteristically less elaborate
and more restrained than Pindaric odes.
Hovering Accent - In scansion, a stress which is
thought of as being equally distributed over two adjacent
syllables, a concept proposed to cover an accent not in
alignment with the expected metrical ictus.
Hudibrastic Verse - A mock-heroic humorous poem
written in octosyllabic couplets, after Hudibras,
a satirical poem by Samuel Butler.
Hymn - A song or ode of praise, usually addressed to
gods, but sometimes to abstractions such as Truth,
Justice, or Fortune.
Hypallage - A type of hyperbaton involving an
interchange of elements in a phrase or sentence so that a
displaced word is in a grammatical relationship with
another that it does not logically qualify.
Hyperbaton - An inversion of the normal grammatical
word order; it may range from a single word moved from
its usual place to a pair of words inverted or to even
more extremes of syntactic displacement. Specific types
of hyperbaton are anastrophe, hypallage, and
hysteron proteron.
Hyperbole - A bold, deliberate overstatement, e.g.,
"I'd give my right arm for a piece of pizza."
Not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means
of emphasizing the truth of a statement.
Hypercatalectic - Having an additional syllable after
the final complete foot in a line of verse. A verse
marked by hypercatalexis is called hypermetrical.
Hypermetrical - A line which contains a redundant
syllable or syllables at variance with the regular
metrical pattern.
Hysteron Proteron - Related to the hyperbaton, a
figure of speech in which the natural or logical order of
events is reversed.
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Iamb - The most common metrical foot in English,
German and Russian verse, and many other languages as
well; it consists of two syllables, a short or unaccented
syllable followed by a long or accented syllable.
Ictus - The recurring stress or accent in a rhythmic
or metrical series of sounds; also, the mark indicating
the syllable on which such stress or accent occurs.
Idealism - The artistic theory or practice that
affirms the preeminent values of ideas and imagination,
as compared with the faithful portrayal of nature in
realism.
Identical Rhyme – See Perfect Rhyme
Idyll or Idyl - A pastoral poem, usually brief,
stressing the picturesque aspects of country life, or a
longer narrative poem generally descriptive of pastoral
scenes and written in a highly finished style.
Imagery,Image - The elements in a literary work used
to evoke mental images, not only of the visual sense, but
of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly
used in reference to figurative language, imagery is a
variable term which can apply to any and all components
of a poem that evoke sensory experience, whether
figurative or literal, and also applies to the concrete
things so imaged. Basically, it is the
representation of one thing by another.
Imagism - A 20th century movement in poetry
advocating free verse, new rhythmic effects, colloquial
language and the expression of ideas and emotions with
clear, well-defined images, rather than through
romanticism or symbolism.
Imitation- See Mimesis
Imperfect Rhyme – See Near Rhyme
Impressionism- As applied to poetry, a late 19th
century movement embracing imagism and symbolism, which
sought to portray the effects (or poet's impressions),
rather than the objective characteristics of life and
events.
Improvisatore - An improviser of verse, usually
extemporaneously.
Incremental Repetition - The repetition in each
stanza--of a ballad, for example--of part of the
preceding stanza, usually with a slight change in wording
for effect.
Initial Rhyme – See Alliteration
In Medias Res - The literary device of beginning a
narrative, such as an epic poem, at a crucial point in
the middle of a series of events. The intent is to create
an immediate interest from which the author can then move
backward in time to narrate the story.
Interior Monologue - A narrative technique in which
action and external events are conveyed indirectly
through a fictional character's mental soliloquy of
thoughts and associations.
Interlocking rhyme – See Chain Rhyme
Internal Rhyme - Also called middle rhyme, a
rhyme occurring within the line. The rhyme may be
with words within the line but not at the line end, or
with a word at the line end and a word within the line.
Invective – See Lampoon
Inversion – See Hyperbaton
Invocation – See Apostrophe
Ionic - A metrical foot of four syllables, either two
long syllables followed by two short syllables (greater
Ionic) or two short syllables followed by two long
syllables (lesser Ionic); also, a verse or meter
composed of Ionic feet.
Irony - Verbal irony is a figure of speech in
the form of an expression in which the use of words is
the opposite of the thought in the speaker's mind, thus
conveying a meaning that contradicts the literal
definition, as when a doctor might say to his patient,
" the bad news is that the operation was
successful." Dramatic or situational irony
is a literary or theatrical device of having a character
utter words which the the reader or audience understands
to have a different meaning, but of which the character
himself is unaware. Irony of fate is when a
situation occurs which is quite the reverse of what one
might have expected.
Isometric composition - the opposite of
'heterometric', i.e. verse that has lines all of the same
number of feet.
Italian Sonnet - a fourteen-line verse form
consisting of rhyme scheme a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a for the first
8 lines, followed by any rhyme scheme for the final 6
lines so long as it consists of 3 rhyme pairs and it
avoids a final rhymed couplet. (eg a-c-c-d-e-d-e)
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Jingle - A short poem marked by catchy repetition.
Jongleur - A public entertainer in the Middle Ages
who recited or sang chansons de geste, fabliaux,
and other poems, sometimes of their own composition, but
more often those written by the trouveres.
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Kenning - A compound word or phrase
similar to an epithet, but which involves a multi-noun
replacement for a single noun, such as wave traveller
for boat or whale-path for ocean,
used especially in Old English, Old Norse and early
Teutonic poetry. A type of periphrasis, some kennings are
instances of metonymy or synecdoche.
King’s English - The standard, pure or correct
English speech or usage, also called Queen's English.
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Lai - A medieval narrative or lyric poem which
flourished in 12th century France, consisting of couplets
of five-syllabled lines separated by single lines of two
syllables. The number of lines and stanzas was not fixed
and each stanza had only two rhymes, one rhyme for the
couplets and the other for the two-syllabled lines.
Succeeding stanzas formed their own rhymes.
Lampoon - A bitter, abusive satire in prose or verse
attacking an individual. Motivated by malice, it is
intended solely to reproach and distress.
Language-centered Poetry - where the forms of the
words themselves are more significant than the sense or
meanings of the words.
Lay - Originally the Anglicized term for the French lai.
It became popular in 14th century England as the Breton
lay, written in a spirit similar to the French lais.
In the 19th century the term, lay, was sometimes
used by English poets for short historical ballads or
narrative poetry of moderate length.
Leonine Verse - Named for a 12th century poet,
Leonius, who first composed such verse, it consists of
hexameters or of hexameters and pentameters in which the
final syllable rhymes with one preceding the caesura, in
the middle of the line.
Light Verse - A loose catch-all term describing
poetry written with a relaxed attitude and ordinary tone
on trivial, mundane, or frivolous themes. It is intended
to amuse and entertain and is frequently distinguished by
sophistication, wit, word-play, elegance, and technical
competence. Among the numerous forms of light verse are
clerihews, double dactyls, epigrams, limericks, nonsense
poetry, occasional poetry, parodies, society verse, and
verse with puns or riddles.
Limerick - A light or humorous verse form of five
chiefly anapestic verses of which lines one, two and five
are of three feet and lines three and four are of two
feet, with a rhyme scheme of aabba. The limerick,
named for a town in Ireland of that name, was popularized
by Edward Lear in his Book of Nonsense published
in 1846.
Line - A unit in the structure of a poem
consisting of one or more metrical feet arranged as a
rhythmical entity.
List Poem – See Catalog Verse
Litotes - A type of meiosis (understatement) in which
an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the
contrary.
Lyric Verse - One of the main groups of poetry, the
others being narrative and dramatic. By far the most
frequently used form in modern poetic literature, the
term lyric includes all poems in which the
speaker's ardent expression of a (usually single)
emotional element predominates. Ranging from complex
thoughts to the simplicity of playful wit, the power and
personality of lyric verse is of far greater importance
than the subject treated. Often brief, but sometimes
extended in a long elegy or a meditative ode, the melodic
imagery of skillfully written lyric poetry evokes in the
reader's mind the recall of similar emotional
experiences.
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Macaronic Verse - Originally, poetry in which words
of different languages were mixed together or, more
strictly, words in the poet's venacular were given the
inflectional endings of another language, usually for
humorous or satiric effect. In modern times, however, in
recognition of the multilingual relationships of sound
and sense between different languages, it is used most
often with serious intent, thus transformed from a
species of comic or nonsense verse into poetry
characterized by scholarly techniques of composition,
allusion, and structure.
Madrigal - A short medieval lyric or pastoral poem
expressing a simple delicate thought.
Malapropism - A mistaken substitution of one word for
another that sounds similar, generally with humorous
effect, as in "arduous romance" for
"ardent romance."
Marinism - Excessive ornateness marked by the use of
extravagant metaphors, so named from the 17th century
Italian poet, Giambattista Marino, and his school of
followers.
Masculine Rhyme - A rhyme occurring in words of one
syllable or in an accented final syllable, such as light
and sight or arise and surprise.
Measure - Poetic rhythm or cadence as determined by
the syllables in a line of poetry with respect to
quantity and accent; also, meter; also, a metrical foot.
Meiosis - An understatement; the presentation of a
thing with under emphasis in order to achieve a greater
effect.
Meistersingers - Members of various German trade
guilds formed in the 15th and 16th centuries by merchants
and craftsmen for the cultivation of poetry and music,
succeeding the Minnesingers.
Melic Verse - Capable of being sung. The term is
derived from an ornate form of Greek lyric poetry of the
7th and 6th centuries B.C.
Mesostich – See Acrostic Poem
Metaphor - A figure of speech in which a word or
phrase literally denoting one object or idea is applied
to another, thereby suggesting a likeness or analogy
between them.
Metaphysical - Of or relating to a group of 17th
century poets whose verse was distinguished by an
intellectual and philosophical style, with extended
metaphors or conceits comparing very dissimilar things.
Meter or Metre - A measure of rhythmic quantity, the
organized succession of groups of syllables at basically
regular intervals in a line of poetry, according to
definite metrical patterns. In classic Greek and Latin
versification, meter depended on the way long and short
syllables were arranged to succeed one another, but in
English the distinction is between accented and
unaccented syllables. The unit of measure is the foot.
Metrical lines are named for the type of constituent foot
and for the number of feet in the line: monometer (1),
dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter
(5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7) and octameter
(8); thus, a line containing five iambic feet, for
example, would be called iambic pentameter. Rarely
does a metrical line exceed six feet.
Metonymy - A figure of speech involving the
substitution of one noun for another of which it is an
attribute or which is closely associated with it, e.g.,
"the kettle boils" or "he drank the
cup." Metonymy is very similar to synecdoche.
Metrical Pause - A "rest" or
"hold" that has a temporal value, usually to
compensate for the omission of an unstressed syllable in
a foot.
Metrical Substitution - small variations within a
metrical pattern
Metrics - The branch of prosody concerned with meter.
Middle Rhyme – See Internal Rhyme
Miltonic - Pertaining to the poetry or style of the
poet, John Milton, one of the most respected figures in
English literature.
Mimesis - Literally, imitation or realistic
representation -- but its poetic significance is more
specific: it refers to the combination of sound in
phonetic symbolism and onomatopoeia (sound suggestion)
with the connotative, symbolic, and synesthetic effects
of the words themselves and their syntactic arrangement
to resemble, reinforce, shape, and temper their lexical
sense in a manner that mirrors the meaning.
Minnesingers - Lyric poets of Germany in the 12th to
14th centuries, all men of noble birth who received royal
patronage and who wrote mainly of courtly love.
They were succeeded by the Meistersingers.
Minstrel - In the Middle Ages, the general term for a
performer who subsisted by reciting verse and singing,
usually accompanied by a harp. Some minstrels were
travelling entertainers; others were permanently employed
by nobles.
Minstrelsy - The art and occupation of minstrels;
also, a collection of minstrel songs or a group of
musicians or minstrels.
Mixed Metaphor - A metaphor whose elements are either
incongruent or contradictory by the use of incompatible
identifications, such as "the dog pulled in its
horns" or "to take arms against a sea of
troubles."
Mock-Epic or Mock-Heroic - A satiric literary form
that treats a trivial or commonplace subject with the
elevated language and heroic style of the classical epic.
Modulation - In poetry, the harmonious use of
language relative to the variations of stress and pitch.
Molossus - In Greek and Latin verse, a metrical foot
consisting of three long syllables.
Monody - A poem in which one person laments another's
death.
Monometer - A line of verse consisting of a single
metrical foot or dipody.
Monorhyme - A poem in which all the lines have
the same end rhyme.
Monostich - A poem or epigram of a single metrical
line.
Monosyllable - A word of one syllable.
Mood – See Tone
Mora pl. Morae - The minimal unit of rhythmic
measurement in quantitive verse, equivalent to the time
it takes to pronounce an ordinary or average short
syllable; two morae are equivalent to a long
syllable.
Mosaic Rhyme - A rhyme in which two or more words
produce a multiple rhyme, either with two or more other
words, as go for / no more, or with one longer
word, as cop a plea / monopoly. It is usually used
for comic effect.
Motif - A thematic element recurring frequently in
literature, such as the dawn song of an aubade or the
carpe diem motif.
Muse - A source of inspiration, a guiding genius.
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Narrative - The narration of an event or story,
stressing details of plot, incident and action. Along
with dramatic and lyric verse, it is one of the main
groups of poetry.
Near Rhyme - Also called approximate rhyme, slant
rhyme, off rhyme, imperfect rhyme or half rhyme,
a rhyme in which the sounds are similar, but not exact,
as in home and come or close and lose.
Most near rhymes are types of consonance.
Neologism - The use of new words or new meanings for
old words not yet included in standard definitions, as in
the recent application of the word cool to denote,
very good, excellent or fashionable. Some disappear from
usage, others like hip and feedback, for
example, remain in the language.
Nonce Word - From the expression, for the nonce,
a word coined or used for a special circumstance or
occasion only.
Nonsense Poetry - Poetry which is absurd, foolish or
preposterous, usually written in a catchy meter with
strong rhymes. It often contains neologisms or
portmanteau words.
Normative rhyme -
the duplication, at the ends of two or more lines of a
given poem, for SOME of the sounds in the last stressed
syllable of those lines, plus duplication of ALL the
sounds in any weakly stressed syllables that might follow
the stressed syllable. The vowel of the stressed
syllable, and any consonant sound that might follow it,
must be the same in both rhyming words. But the consonant
sound that precedes the vowel of the stressed syllable
should be DIFFERENT on each rhyming word. Eg 'so/go',
'round/abound', 'lotion/motion', but NOT 'relate/late'.
Numen - A spiritual source or influence, often
identified with a natural object, phenomenon or place.
Nursery Rhyme - A short poem for children written in
rhyming verse and handed down in folklore.
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Objectivism - A type of 20th century poetry in which
objects are selected and portrayed for their own
particular value, rather than their symbolic quality or
the intellectual concept of the author.
Occasional Poem - A poem written for a particular
occasion, such as a dedication, birthday, or victory. The
encomium, elegy, prothalamium, and epithalamium are
examples of occasional poems.
Octameter - A line of verse consisting of eight
metrical feet.
Octave - A stanza of eight lines, especially the
first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.
Octosyllable - A metrical line of eight syllables,
such as iambic, tetrameter, or a poem composed of
eight-syllable lines.
Ode - A type of lyric or melic verse, usually
irregular rather than uniform, generally of considerable
length, and sometimes continuous, sometimes divided in
accordance with transitions of thought and mood in a
complexity of stanzaic forms; it often has varying iambic
line lengths with no fixed system of rhyme schemes and is
always marked by the rich, intense expression of an
elevated thought, often addressed to a praised person or
object.
Odeon or Odeum - A small roofed theater in ancient
antiquity devoted to the presentation of musical and
poetic works to the public in competition for prizes.
Off Rhyme - a near rhyme, such as 'down/noon',
'seat/fate'
Onomatopoeia - Strictly speaking, the formation or
use of words which imitate sounds, like whispering,
clang and sizzle, but the term is generally
expanded to refer to any word whose sound is suggestive
of its meaning.
Open Couplet - A couplet of the Romantic period with
run-on lines, in which the thought was carried beyond the
rhyming lines of the couplet. Ottava Rima - Originally
Italian, a stanza of eight lines of heroic verse, rhyming
abababcc.
Ottava Rima - verse form of eight lines in rhyme
scheme a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c. Eg Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso'
and Byron's 'Don Juan'
Oxymoron - The conjunction of words which, at first
view, seem to be contradictory or incongruous, but whose
surprising juxtaposition expresses a truth or dramatic
effect, such as, cool fire, deafening silence, wise
folly, etc.
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Paean - A hymn of praise, joy, triumph, etc.
Paeon - In ancient poetry, a metrical foot consisting
of four syllables, one long and three short. The position
of the long syllable can be varied in four ways, thus the
foot can be called a primus, secundus, tertius or quartus
paeon.
Palindrome - A word, verse, or sentence in which the
sequence of letters is the same forward and backward, as
the word, madam, or the sentence, "A man, a
plan, a canal: Panama." A variation in which the
sequence of words is the same forward and backward is
called a word-order palindrome.
Palinode or Palinody - A poem in which the poet
contradicts or retracts something in an earlier poem.
Panegyric - A speech or poem of elaborate praise for
some distinguished person, object or event, similar to,
but more formal than, an encomium.
Pantoum - A poem in a fixed form, consisting of a
varying number of 4-line stanzas with lines rhyming
alternately; the second and fourth lines of each stanza
are repeated to form the first and third lines of the
succeeding stanza, with the first and third lines of the
first stanza forming the second and fourth of the last
stanza, but in reverse order, so that the opening and
closing lines of the poem are identical.
Paradox - A statement which contains seemingly
contradictory elements or appears contrary to common
sense, yet can be seen as perhaps, or indeed, true when
viewed from another angle.
Parallelism - The repetition of syntactical
similarities in passages closely connected for rhetorical
effect. The repetitive structure lends wit or emphasis to
the meanings of the separate clauses, thus being
particularly effective in antithesis.
Parnassian - Of or related to poetry, after
Parnassus, a mountain in Greece with two summits; one
summit was consecrated to Bacchus, the other to Apollo
and the Muses, thus Parnassus was regarded as the seat of
poetry and music.
Parody - A ludicrous imitation, usually for comic
effect but sometimes for ridicule, of the style and
content of another work. The humor depends upon the
reader's familiarity with the original.
Paronomasia - A play on words in which the same word
is used in different senses or words similar in sound are
used in opposition to each other for a rhetorical
contrast; a pun. For an example, see Well-Versed.
Paronym - A word derived from or related to another
word; also, the form in one language for a word in
another, as in the English canal for the Latin canalis.
Pasquinade - A lampoon or satirical writing.
Pastiche - An artistic effort that imitates or
caricatures the work of another artist.
Pastoral Elegy - Elegy
Pastoral Poetry - Poetry idealizing the lives of
shepherds and country folk, although the term is often
used loosely to include any poems with a rural aspect.
Pastourelle - A form of pastoral poetry associated
chiefly with French writers of the 12th and 13th
centuries. Typically, the narrator, identified as a
knight, recounts his love affair with a shepherdess.
Pathetic Fallacy - The ascribing of human traits or
feelings to inanimate nature for eloquent effect,
especially feelings in sympathy with those expressed or
experienced by the writer.
Pathos - An element in artistic expression evoking
pity, sorrow or compassion.
Pattern Poetry - Poetry in which the letters, words,
and lines are configured in such a way that the poem's
printed appearance on the page forms a recognizable
outline related to the subject, thus conveying or
extending the meaning of the words.
Pause - See Caesura and Metrical Pause
Pentameter - A line of verse consisting of five
metrical feet.
Perfect Rhyme - Also called true rhyme or exact
rhyme, a rhyme which meets the following
requirements: (1) an exact correspondence in the
vowel sound and, in words ending in consonants, the sound
of the final consonant, (2) a difference in the consonant
sounds preceding the vowel, and (3) a similarity of
accent on the rhyming syllable(s).
Periphrasis - The substitution of an elaborate phrase
in place of a simple word or expression, as
"fragrant beverage drawn from China's herb" for
tea.
Persona - The speaker or voice of a literary work,
i.e., who is doing the talking. Thus persona is
the "I" of a narrative or the implied speaker
of a lyric poem.
Personification - A type of metaphor in which
distinctive human characteristics, e.g., honesty,
emotion, volition, etc., are attributed to an animal,
object or idea.
Petrarchan Sonnet - An Italian sonnet form perfected
by Petrarch (1304-1374), characterized by an octave with
a rhyme scheme of abbaabba and a sestet rhyming
variously, but usually cdecde or cdccdc.
The octave typically introduces the theme or problem,
with the sestet providing the resolution.
Phonetic Symbolism - Sound suggestiveness; the
association of particular word-sounds with common areas
of meaning so that other words of similar sounds come to
be associated with those meanings. Also called sound
symbolism, it is utilized by poets to achieve sounds
appropriate to their significance.
Picaresque - The term applied to literature dealing
sympathetically with the adventures of clever and amusing
rogues.
Pierian - Of or relating to learning or poetry, after
the region of Pieria in ancient Macedonia which once
worshipped the Muses.
Pindaric Verse - In Greek literature, a poem designed
for song, of various meters and of lofty style, patterned
after the odes of the classical Greek poet, Pindar.
Though metrically complex, and varying from one ode to
another, Pindaric verse, also called Dorian or choric
odes, regularly consists of a similarly-structured
strophe and an antistrophe, followed by an epode of
different length and structure.
Play on Words - See Paronomasia, Pun
Pleiad or Pleiade - Named after the open cluster in
the constellation Taurus, a group of 16th century French
poets who sought to restore the level of French poetry
from its decline in the Middle Ages to classical
standards as well as to enhance the richness of the
French language.
Pleonasm - Redundancy; the use of more words than
necessary to express the sense of a thing, but which
often stress or enrich the thought, such as, "I
touched it with my own hands" or "a tiny little
acorn."
Ploce - The general term for a figure of speech in
which a word or phrase is repeated in close proximity
within a clause or line, usually for emphasis or for
extended significance, as "A wife who was a wife
indeed" or "there are medicines and
medicines."
Poem - A rhythmic expression of feelings or ideas,
often using metaphor, meter and rhyme.
Poems of Chance - Poetry created by adherents of the
dadaistic movement, composed by writing down, without
alteration, an illogical chance association of words,
free of the limitations of rational and artistic thought
processes.
Poesy or Poesie - A poem or a group of poems, i.e.,
poetry. The term also refers to the art of writing poems,
often used in the sense of trite or sentimentalized
poetic writing.
Poet - A writer of poetry.
Poetaster - An inadequate writer of verses, an
inferior poet.
Poetic License - The liberties generally allowable
for a poet to take with his subject-matter to achieve a
desired effect or with his grammatical construction,
etc., to conform to the requirements of rhyme and meter;
but in a broader sense, it includes "creative"
deviations from historical fact, such as anachronisms.
Poetics - Literary study or criticism on the nature
and laws of poetic theory and practice; also, a treatise
on poetry or aesthetics.
Poeticule - A dabbler in poetry; a poetaster.
Poet Laureate - A poet honored for his artistic
achievement or selected as most representative of his
country or area; in England, a court official appointed
by the sovereign, whose original duties included the
composition of odes in honor of the sovereign's birthday
and in celebration of State occasions of importance.
Poetry - A literary expression in which language is
used in a concentrated blend of sound and imagery to
create an emotional response; essentially rhythmic, it is
usually metrical and frequently structured in stanzas.
Poets’ Corner - A portion of the South Transept
of Westminster Abbey, which contains the remains of many
famous literary figures, including Chaucer and Spenser,
and also displays memorials to others who are buried
elsewhere.
Polyphonic Prose - A type of free verse using
characteristic devices of verse such as alliteration and
assonance, but presented in a form resembling prose.
Polyptoton - A figure of speech in which a word is
repeated in a different form of the same root or stem, as
Shakespeare's "Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth
make bright" or repeated with its word class changed
into a different part of speech, as Tennyson's "My
own heart's heart, and my ownest own, farewell."
Polyrhythmic Verse - A type of free verse
characterized by a variety of rhythms, often
non-integrated or contrasting.
Polysyllable - A word consisting of several
syllables. It is most often applied to words of more than
three syllables.
Polysyndeton - The repetition of a number of
conjunctions in close succession, as in, "We have
men and arms and planes and
tanks."
Portmanteau Word - An artificial word made up of
parts of others, so called because of two meanings
combined in one word.
Poulter’s Measure - A meter consisting of
alternate Alexandrines and fourteeners,
i.e., twelve-syllable and fourteen-syllable lines, a
common measure in Elizabethan times.
Proceleusmatic - A metrical foot consisting of four
short syllables.
Procephalic - In ancient prosody, having an excess of
one syllable in the first foot of a line of verse.
Prolepsis - The application of an adjective to a noun
in anticipation of the action of the verb.
Prose - Ordinary language people use in speaking or
writing, distinguished from the language of poetry
primarily in that the line is not treated as a formal
unit and it has no repetitive pattern of rhythm or meter.
Prose Poem - A genre in the poetic spectrum between
free verse and prose. It is distinguished by the poetic
characteristics of rhythmic, aural, and syntactic
repetition, compression of thought, sustained intensity,
and patterned structure, but is set on the page in a
continuous sequence of sentences as in prose, without
line breaks.
Prosody - The general term for the structure of
poetry; the science of versification according to
syllabic quantity, accent, etc.; the systematic study of
poetic meter. All types of metrical feet, patterns of
sound and rhyme, kinds of stanzaic forms, etc., fall
within its domain.
Prosopopeia - A figure of speech in which an
imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking.
Prothalamium or Prothalamion - A song or poem in
honor of a bride and bridegroom before their wedding.
Proverb - A brief, pithy popular saying or epigram
embodying some familiar truth, practical interpretation
of experience, or useful thought.
Pun - A word play suggesting, with humorous intent,
the different meanings of one word or the use of two or
more words similar in sound but different in meaning.
Pyrrhic - Common in classic Greek poetry, a metrical
foot consisting of two short or unaccented syllables, as
in the third foot of:
The slings | and ar | rows of | outra |
geous for | tune
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Quantitive Verse - Verse which, rather than on the
syllabic count or accent, is based on a systematic
succession of long and short syllables, i.e., syllables
which take a longer or shorter quantity of time to
pronounce. When the lines are properly read, with the
speed of articulation determined by varying vowel length
and consonant groupings, the rhythmic pattern develops
naturally. The unit of measure in quantitive verse is the
mora.
Quatorzain - A sonnet or any poem of fourteen lines.
Quatrain - A poem, unit or stanza of four lines of
verse, usually with a rhyme scheme of abab or its
variant, xbyb. It is the most common stanzaic
form.
Queen’s English – See King’s English
Quintet or Quintain - A poem, unit or stanza of five
lines of verse.
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Realism - The endeavor to portray an accurate
representation of nature and real life without
idealization.
Reduplicated Words – See Ricochet Words
Refrain - A phrase or line, generally pertinent to
the central topic, which is repeated verbatim, usually at
regular intervals throughout a poem, most often at the
end of a stanza. Occasionally a single word is used as a
refrain.
Repetend - The irregular repetition of a word,
phrase, or line in a poem. It is a type of refrain, but
differs in that it can appear at various places in the
poem and may be only a partial repetition.
Repetition - A basic artistic device, fundamental to
any conception of poetry. It is a highly effective
unifying force; the repetition of sound, syllables,
words, syntactic elements, lines, stanzaic forms, and
metrical patterns establishes cycles of expectation which
are reinforced with each successive fulfillment.
Resonance - The quality of richness or variety of
sounds in poetic texture.
Responsion - when stanzas are of the same meter, the
same rhyme scheme and same number of lines they are 'in
responsion'
Rhapsody - The recitation of a short epic poem or a
longer epic abridged for recitation.
Rhetoric - The art of speaking or writing
effectively; skill in the eloquent use of language.
Rhetorical Question - A question solely for effect,
with no answer expected. By the implication that the
answer is obvious, it is a means of achieving an emphasis
stronger than a direct statement.
Rhopalic - Having each succeeding unit in a poetic
structure longer than the preceding one. Applied to a
line, it means that each successive word is a syllable
longer that its predecessor. Applied to a stanza, each
successive line is longer by either a syllable or a
metrical foot. Rhopalic verse is also called wedge
verse.
Rhyme - In the specific sense, a type of echoing
which utilizes a correspondence of sound in the final
accented vowels and all that follows of two or more
words, but the preceding consonant sounds must differ, as
in the words, bear and care. In a poetic
sense, however, rhyme refers to a close
similarity of sound as well as an exact
correspondence; it includes the agreement of vowel sounds
in assonance and the repetition of consonant sounds in
consonance and alliteration. Usually, but not always,
rhymes occur at the ends of lines.
Rhyme Royal - A stanza of seven lines of heroic or
five-foot iambic verse, rhyming ababbcc. It
probably received its name from its use by King James I
of Scotland, who was both king and a poet. It was
previously known as Troilus verse because Chaucer
used it in his Troilus and Criseyde.
Rhyme Scheme - The pattern established by the
arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally
described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the
recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the ababbcc
of the Rhyme Royal stanza form.
Rhymester - An inferior poet.
Rhyming Slang - A slang popular in Great Britain in
the early part of the 20th century, in which a word was
replaced by a word or phrase that rhymed with it, as loaf
of bread for head. When the rhyme was a
compound word or part of a phrase, the rhyming part was
often dropped, so in the foregoing example, loaf
would come to stand for head.
Rhythm - An essential of all poetry, the regular or
progressive pattern of recurrent accents in the flow of a
poem as determined by the arses and theses of the
metrical feet, i.e., the rise and fall of stress. The
measure of rhythmic quantity is the meter.
Rich Rhyme - See Perfect Rhyme
Ricochet Words - Hyphenated words, usually formed by
reduplicating a word with a change in the radical vowel
or the initial consonant sound, such as pitter-patter,
chit-chat, riff-raff, wishy-washy, hob-nob, roly-poly,
pell-mell, razzle-dazzle, etc.
Riding Rhyme - An early form of heroic verse, so
named for its use by Chaucer to describe the riding of
the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.
Romance - Formerly a medieval tale in mixed prose and
verse describing marvelous adventures of a hero of
chivalry, it later came to mean a short lyric poem.
Romanticism - An 18th century movement revolting
against the conventional strictness of neo-classicism and
placing artistic emphasis on imagination and the
emotions.
Rondeau - A fixed form used mostly in light or witty
verse, usually consisting of fifteen octo - or
decasyllabic lines in three stanzas, with only two rhymes
used throughout. A word or words from the first part of
the first line are used as a (usually unrhymed) refrain
ending the second and third stanzas, so the rhyme scheme
is aabba aabR aabbaR.
Rondel - A variation of the rondeau in which the
first two lines of the first stanza are repeated as the
last two lines of the second and third stanzas, thus a
rhyme scheme of ABba abAB abbaA(B). (Sometimes
only the first line of the poem is repeated at the end.)
Rondelet - A short variation of the rondeau
consisting generally of one 7-line stanza with two
rhymes. The first line has four syllables and is repeated
as a refrain forming the third and seventh lines; the
other lines have eight syllables each.
Roundel - A variation of the rondeau devised by A. C.
Swinburne, demonstrated in his poem, "The
Roundel." He shortened the stanzas and moved the
first refrain from the second to the first stanza, thus
revising the rhyme scheme to abaR bab abaR.
Roundelay - A poem with a refrain repeated frequently
or at fixed intervals, as in a rondel.
Rune - A Finnish or Old Norse poem.
Run-on Couplet - See Open Couplet
Run-on Lines - Lines in which the thought continues
into the next line, as opposed to end-stopped.
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Sapphic Verse - After the odes of the Greek lyric
poet, Sappho, a verse of eleven syllables in five feet,
of which the first, fourth and fifth are trochees, the
second a spondee, and the third a dactyl. The Sapphic
strophe consists of three Sapphic verses followed by an
Adonic.
Satire - A literary work, which exposes and ridicules
human vices or folly. Historically perceived as tending
toward didacticism, it is usually intended as a moral
criticism directed against the injustice of social
wrongs. It may be written with witty jocularity or with
anger and bitterness.
Scan - To mark off lines of poetry into rhythmic
units, or feet, to provide a visual representation of
their metrical structure.
Scansion - The analysis of line rhythms performed by scanning
the lines to determine their metrical categorization,
e.g., iambic trimeter, etc., as a way of describing the
rhythmical quality of a poem. Scansion will also show the
variations in the meter and the deviations from it, if
there are any.
Scop - An Old English poet or a poet troubadour of
early Teutonic poetry.
Senryu - A three-line unrhymed Japanese poetic form
structurally similar to the haiku, but dealing
with human rather than physical nature, usually in an
ironic or satiric vein.
Sense Pause - See Caesura
Septenarius - A verse consisting of seven feet.
Septet - A stanza of seven lines.
Serenade - A lover's song or poem of the evening.
Serpentine Verses - Verses ending with the same word
with which they begin.
Sestet - A stanza of six lines, especially the last
six lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.
Sestina - A fixed form consisting of six 6-line
(usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words of the
first stanza recur as end words of the following five
stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the
middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding
envoi in the form of a tercet. The usual ending word
order for a sestina is as follows:
First stanza, 1- 2
- 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
Second stanza, 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3
Third stanza, 3 - 6 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 5
Fourth stanza, 5 - 3 - 2 - 6 - 1 - 4
Fifth stanza, 4 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 6 - 2
Sixth stanza, 2 - 4 - 6 - 5 - 3 - 1
Concluding tercet:
middle of first line - 2, end of first line - 5
middle of second line - 4, end of second line - 3
middle if third line - 6, end of third line - 1
Shaped Verse – See Pattern
Poetry
Sight Rhyme - Words which are similar in spelling but
different in pronunciation, like mow and how
or height and weight. Some words that are
sight rhymes today did have a correspondence of sound in
earlier stages of the language.
Sigmatism - The intentional repetition of words with
sibilant speech sounds closely spaced in a line of
poetry, as in,
She sells sea-shells by the sea shore
Sijo - A short Korean poetic form consisting of three
lines, each line having a total of 14-16 syllables in
four groups ranging from 2 to 7 (but usually 3 or 4)
syllables, with a natural pause at the end of the second
group and a major pause after the fourth group. The third
line often introduces a resolution, a touch of humor, or
a turn of thought. Though there are no restrictions on
the subject matter, favored ones include nature, virtue
and rural life. The unique texture of the sijo derives
from the blend of sound, rhythm and meaning. Western
sijos are sometimes divided at the pauses and presented
in six lines.
Simile - A figure of speech in which an explicit
comparison is made between two essentially unlike things,
usually using like, as or than.
Skald - An ancient Scandinavian poet or bard.
Skeltonics - Named for their inventor, John Skelton,
short verses of irregular meter with two or three
stresses, sometimes in falling and sometimes in rising
rhythm and usually with rhymed couplets.
Slant Rhyme – See Near Rhyme
Society Verse - A short lyrical poem written in an
urbane manner or crisp, animated and typically ironic
light verse dealing with contemporaneous topics.
Solecism - An impropriety of speech; a violation of
the established rules of syntax.
Soliloquy - A talking to oneself; the discourse of a
person speaking to himself, whether alone or in the
presence of others. It gives the illusion of being
unspoken reflections.
Sonnet - A fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of
five-foot iambic verse. In the English or Shakespearean
sonnet, the lines are grouped in three quatrains (with
six alternating rhymes) followed by a detached rhymed
couplet which is usually epigrammatic. In the original
Italian form, the fourteen lines are divided into an
octave of two rhyme-sounds arranged abba abba and
a sestet of two additional rhyme sounds which may be
variously arranged. This latter form tends to divide the
thought into two opposing or complementary phases of the
same idea.
Sonneteer - A composer of sonnets; also, the term is
sometimes applied to a minor or insignificant poet.
Sotadic or Sotadean - See Palindrome
Sound Devices - Resources used by writers of verse to
convey and reinforce the meaning or experience of poetry
through the skillful use of sound.
Sound Symbolism - See Phonetic Symbolism
Speaker - See Persona
Spenserian Stanza - A stanza devised by Spenser for The
Faerie Queene, founded on the Italian ottava rima.
It is a stanza of nine iambic lines, all of ten syllables
except the last, which is an Alexandrine. There
are only three rhymes in a stanza, arranged in a ababbcbcc
rhyme scheme.
Split Rhyme - See Broken Rhyme
Spondee - A metrical foot with two long or equally
accented syllables together, as in bread box or shoeshine.
Be the | green grass | above | me
Sprung Rhyme - A poetic rhythm characterized by feet
varying from one to four syllables which are equal in
time length but different in the number of syllables. It
has only one stress per foot, falling on the first
syllable, or on the only syllable if there is but one,
which produces the frequent juxtaposition of single
accented syllables.
Stanza or Stanzaic - A division of a poem made
by arranging the lines into units separated by a space,
usually of a corresponding number of lines and a
recurrent pattern of meter and rhyme. A poem with such
divisions is described as having a stanzaic form,
but not all verse is divided in stanzas.
Stanza Forms - The names given to describe the number
of lines in a stanzaic unit, such as: couplet (2),
tercet (3), quatrain (4), quintet (5), sestet (6), septet
(7) and octave (8),Some stanzas follow a set
rhyme scheme and meter in addition to the number of lines
and are given specific names to describe them, such as,
ballad meter, ottava rima, rhyme royal, terza rima and
Spenserian stanza.
Stave - A verse, stanza or a metrical portion of a
poem.
Stich - A line or verse of poetry.
Stichomythia or Stichomythy - A dramatic dialogue of
lively repartee in alternate verse lines. (When
half-lines instead of whole lines are used for this
technique, it is called hemistichomythia)
Stornello Verses - Verses which include the
repetition of certain words in changing order and varied
placement.
Strain - A passage or piece of poetry; a flow of
eloquence, style or spirit in expression.
Stream of Consciousness – See Interior Monologue
Stress - The relative force or prominence of word
sounds or syllables in verse, i.e., the degree of accent.
Strophe - In modern poetry, a stanza or rhythmic
system of two or more lines arranged as a unit. In
classical poetry, a strophe is the first division in the
triadic structure of Pindaric verse, corresponding
metrically to the antistrophe which follows it; also, the
stanza preceding or alternating with the antistrophe in
ancient lyric poetry.
Style - The poet's individual creative process, as
determined by choices involving diction, figurative
language, rhetorical devices, sounds, and rhythmic
patterns.
Syllabic Verse - A type of verse distinguished
primarily by the syllable count, i.e., the number of
syllables in each line, rather than by the rhythmical
arrangement of accents or time quantities.
Syllable - A word or part of a word representing a
sound produced as a unit by a single impulse of the
voice, consisting of either a vowel sound alone as in oh
or a vowel with attendant consonants, as in throne.
Syllepsis - A type of zeugma in which a single word,
usually a verb or adjective, agrees grammatically with
two or more other words, but semantically with only one,
thereby effecting a shift in sense with the other, as in
"colder than ice and a usurer's heart."
Symbol - An image transferred by something that
stands for or represents something else, like flag
for country, or autumn for maturity.
Symbols can transfer the ideas embodied in the
image without stating them.
Symbolism - A late 19th century movement reacting
against realism. Influenced by the connections between
music and poetry, it sought to achieve the effects of
images and metaphors to symbolize the basic idea or
emotion of each poem.
Symploce - The repetition of a word or expression at
the beginnings plus the repetition of a word or
expression at the ends of successive phrases, i. e, a
combination of both anaphora and epistrophe.
Synaeresis or Syneresis - A type of elision in
which two contiguous vowels within a word which are
normally pronounced as two syllables, as in seest,
are pronounced as one syllable instead.
Synaloepha or Synalepha - A type of elision in which
a vowel at the end of one word is coalesced with one
beginning the next word, as "th' embattled
plain."
Syncopation - In the quantitive verse of classical
poetry, the suppression of one syllable in a metrical
pattern, with its time value either replaced by a pause
(like a musician's "rest") or by the additional
lengthening of an adjoining long syllable.
Syncope - A type of elision in which a word is
contracted by removing one or more letters or syllables
from the middle, as ne'er for never, or fo'c'sle
for forecastle.
Synecdoche - A figure of speech in which a part of
something stands for the whole or the whole for a part,
as wheels for automobile or society
for high society.
Synesthesia or Synaesthesia - The perception or
description of one kind of sense impression in words
normally used to describe a different sense, like a
"sweet voice" or a "velvety smile."
It can be very effective for creating vivid imagery.
Synesthetic Metaphor - A metaphor that suggests a
similarity between experiences in different senses, as
"a gourmet of country music."
Synonym - One of two or more words that have the same
or nearly identical meanings.
Syntax - The way in which linguistic elements (words
and phrases) are arranged to form grammatical structure.
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Tag
- a
syllable of extra light stress at the end of a line, not
counted in the meter. Also known as 'feminine
ending’.
Tagalied - See Aubade
Tail Rhyme - Also called caudate rhyme, a
verse form in which rhyming lines, usually a couplet or
triplet, are followed by a tail, a line of shorter length
with a different rhyme; in a tail-rhyme stanza, the tails
rhyme with each other.
Tanka - The classic form of Japanese poetry with five
unrhymed lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven
syllables to produce a concentrated essence of a single
event, image or mood.
Tautology - The unnecessary and excessive repetition
of the same idea in different words in the same sentence,
as "The room was completely dark and had no
illumination," or "A breeze greeted the dusk
and nightfall was heralded by a gentle wind."
Telestich - See Acrostic Poem
Tension - The artistically satisfying equilibrium of
opposing forces in a poem, usually referring to the use
of language and imagery, but often applied to other
elements, such as dramatic structure, rhythmic patterns,
and sometimes to the aesthetic value of the poem as a
whole.
Tenson - A medieval competition in verse on the
subject of love or gallantry before a tribunal between
rival troubadours; also, a subdivision of a chanson
composed by one of the competitors.
Tercet - A unit or group of three lines of verse,
which are rhymed together or have a rhyme scheme that
interlaces with an adjoining tercet.
Terza Rima - A verse form consisting of tercets,
usually in iambic pentameter in English poetry, with a
chain or interlocking rhyme scheme, as: aba, bcb, cdc,
etc. The pattern concludes with a separate line added at
the end of the poem (or each part) rhyming with the
second line of the preceding tercet or with a rhyming
couplet.
Tetrabrach - See Proceleusmatic
Tetrameter - A line of verse consisting of four
metrical feet.
Texture - The "feel" of a poem that comes
from the interweaving of technical elements, syntax,
patterns of sound and meaning.
Theme - The central idea, topic, or didactic quality
of a work.
Thesis - The first part of an antithetical figure of
speech; also, the unaccented or shorter part of a poetic
foot.
Tmesis - The division of a compound word into two
parts, with one or more words between, as what place
soever for whatsoever.
Tone - The poet's or persona's attitude in style or
expression toward the subject, e.g., loving, ironic,
bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, etc. Tone can also
refer to the overall mood of the poem itself, in the
sense of a pervading atmosphere intended to influence the
readers' emotional response and foster expectations of
the conclusion.
Tragedy - A medieval narrative poem or tale typically
describing the downfall of a great person; a drama,
usually in verse, portraying a conflict between a
strong-willed protagonist and a superior force such as
destiny, culminating in death or disaster.
Tragic Hero – See hamartia
Tribrach - A metrical foot of three short syllables.
Trimeter - A line of verse consisting of three
metrical feet or three dipodies.
Triolet - A poem or stanza of eight lines in which
the first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh
lines, and the second line as the eighth, with a rhyme
scheme of ABaAabAB.
Triple Rhyme - A rhyme in which three final syllables
of words have the same sound, as in glorious and victorious.
Trisyllable - A word of three syllables.
Trochee or Trochaic - A metrical foot with a long or
accented syllable followed by a short or unaccented
syllable, as in only or total, or the
opening line of Poe's "The Raven,"
Once up | on a | midnight | dreary, |
while I | pondered, | weak and | weary
Troilus Verse – See Rhyme
Royal
Trope - The intentional use of a word or expression
figuratively, i.e., used in a different sense from its
original significance in order to give vividness or
emphasis to an idea. Some important types of trope are: antonomasia,
irony, metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche.
Troubadour - One of a class of lyric poets and
poet-musicians, often of knightly rank, who flourished
from the 11th through the 13th centuries in Southern
France and neighboring areas of Italy and Spain, and who
wrote of courtly love.
Trouvere - One of a school of poets of northern
France who flourished from the 11th to 14th centuries and
who composed mostly narrative works such as chansons
de geste and fabliaux.
True Rhyme – See Perfect Rhyme
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U
Ubi Sunt – Poetic theme in which the poet asks
“where are” they, where have they gone. The
theme began in Medieval Latin, with the formula ubi sunt
used to introduce a roll-call of the dead or missing and
to suggest how transitory life is.
Unmetered Poetry – poetry without a regular
recurring numerical principle in its rhythmic
construction, also known as 'free verse'.
Unstressed Syllable – A syllable that is not
emphasized, like the a in aghast or the ish
in churlish.
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V
Verse
-
A line of writing arranged in a metrical pattern, i.e., a
line of poetry. Also, a piece of poetry or a particular
form of poetry such as free verse, blank verse,
etc., or the art or work of a poet.
Verse Paragraph - A line grouping of varying length,
as distinct from stanzas of equal length. Seldom used in
rhymed verse, it is the usual division in blank verse.
Verset - A short verse, especially one from a sacred
book.
Versicle - A little verse; also, a short passage said
or sung by a leader in public worship and followed by a
response from the people.
Versification - The art of writing verses, especially
with regard to meter and rhythm. The term versification
can also refer to a particular metrical structure or
style or to a version in verse of something originally
written in prose.
Versifier - A writer of verse, often applied to a
writer of light or inferior verse.
Villanelle - A poem in a fixed form, consisting of
five three-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and having
only two rhymes. In the stanzas following the first, the
first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated
alternately as refrains. They are the final two lines of
the concluding quatrain.
Virelay - An ancient French verse form consisting of
stanzas of indeterminate length and number, with
alternating long and short lines and an interlaced rhyme
scheme, as abab bcbc cdcd dada.
Visual Poetry - Poetry arranged in such a manner that
its visual appearance has an elevated significance of its
own, thus achieving in an equivalence (or even more)
between the sight and sound of the poem.
Voice - the agent or agency who is speaking
throughout a poem.
Volta - The place at which a distinct turn of thought
occurs. The term is most commonly used for the
characteristic transition point in a sonnet, as between
the octave and sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet.
Vowel Rhyme – See Assonance
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W
Wedge Verse – See Rhopalic
Well-Versed - A state of familiarity with poetics
accomplished by reading this Glossary.
Whimsy or Whimsey - A fanciful or fantastic creation
in writing or art.
Wordsmith - A person who works with words; a skillful
writer.
Wrenched Accent - A forced change in the normal
accent of a word syllable(s) to make the word conform to
the prevailing metrical pattern. While it may result from
faulty versification, it was conventional in the folk
ballad and is sometimes used deliberately for comic
effects.
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Z
Zeugma - A figure of speech in
which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, is used
in the same grammatical and semantic relationship with
two or more other words.
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