ALLUSION
A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, historical events, or legends. Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied association, contrast two objects or people through an unusual set-up of references, or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself. Authors assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context. For instance, if a teacher were to refer to his class as a horde of Mongols, the students will have no idea if they are being praised or villified unless they know what the Mongol horde was and what activities it participated in historically. This historical allusion assumes a certain level of education or awareness in the audience, so it should be taken as a compliment rather than an attempt at obscurity.

ONOMATOPOEIA (ahn-uh-mah-tuh-PEE-uh)
Any word whose sound is suggestive of its meaning. For instance, buzz, click, rattle, and grunt make sounds like the noise they represent. Think about how the word ‘buzz’ sounds exactly like the sound a bee makes. If someone were to say “The buzz of the bees kept him awake,” that would be an example of onomatopoeia.

METAPHOR
A figure of speech in which two unlike objects are implicitly compared without the use of "like" or "as." Frequently, the term metaphor (as opposed to a metaphor), is used to include all figures of speech, so the expression, "metaphorically speaking," refers to speaking figuratively rather than literally. A metaphor, or figure of speech, is implied meaning. You can think of the poetic metaphor as having two basic parts: (1) what is meant, and (2) what is said.
In other words, when something is something else: the ladder of success (success is a metaphorical ladder), or "Carthage was a beehive of buzzing workers." or, "This is your brain on drugs."

SYNECDOCHE
Using a part of a physical object to represent the whole object: "Twenty eyes watched our every move" (i.e., ten people watched our every move). "A hungry stomach has no ears" (La Fontaine).

PUNS
A pun twists the meaning of words. It is a play on words 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, as in Mark A. Neville's:
Eve was nigh Adam
Adam was naive.

HYPERBOLE
A gross exaggeration: "His thundering shout could split rocks." Or, "Yo' mama's so fat. . . ."

OXYMORON (also called Paradox)
Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense, or putting opposites next to each other. Common oxymorons include ‘jumbo’ shrimp, and any other opposites you can think of. The best oxymorons seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions. For instance, "without laws, we can have no freedom." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar also makes use of a famous oxymoron: "Cowards die many times before their deaths" (2.2.32).

PERSONIFICATION
A type of metaphor, or figure of speech, where distinctive human characteristics (like honesty, emotion, kindness, etc.) are attributed to an animal, inanimate object, or idea. Some examples are as follows:
"The haughty lion surveyed his realm"
"My car was happy to be washed"
"'Fate frowned on his endeavors."
"The ground thirsts for rain”
“The wind whispered secrets to us."

SIMILE
A figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between things which are not alike. Similes usually make use of the words like, as or than. In other words, when something is like something else:
"Her skin was like alabaster."
"He was as unpleasant as having a wart."

Word Meanings:

ANALOGY
An agreement or similarity between things otherwise different; sleep and death, for example, are analogous in that they both share a lack of animation and a recumbent posture. If someone were to say: “The cold sleep of death was upon him,” that would be an analogy.

ANTONYM
One of two or more words that have opposite meanings. An example would be tart sugar.

CONCRETE Words
Language that describes qualities that can be perceived with the five senses instead of generalized language. For instance, calling a fruit "pleasant" or "good" is abstract, while calling a fruit "cool" or "sweet" is concrete. Another way of saying it is a concrete word is by saying it literally matches what you are describing, while an abstract word makes use of analogy.

CONNOTATION
The suggestion of a meaning by a word beyond what it literally describes. The word home, for example, means the place where one lives, but by connotation, it suggests security, family, love and comfort.

DENOTATION
Sometimes one of the connotations of a word gains enough widespread acceptance to become a denotation, or a literal dictionary meaning of a word. Many words have more than one denotation, or meaning, such as the multiple meanings of fair or spring. Poets or authors can use these words to suggest more than one idea with the same word. Remember, denotation totally disregards any historical or emotional connotation, and is always literal.

HOMOPHONES (a.k.a. homonyms)
Homophones are words which are identical in pronunciation but different in meaning or derivation or spelling, like words such as rite, write, right, and Wright; or rain and reign.

HETEROYMS
Words that are identical in spelling, but different in meaning and pronunciation, like sow, to scatter seed, and sow, a female hog.

HOMOGRAPHS
Words that are identical in spelling, but different in meaning and derivation or pronunciation, like the word pine, to yearn for, and pine, a tree, or the bow of a ship and a bow and arrow.

SYNONYM: One of two or more words that have the same or nearly identical meanings. An example would be sugar and sweet.

Poetry Terms
POEM
Rhythmic expression of feelings or ideas

POET
Someone who writes poems.

RHYTHM
An essential of all poetry, the regular or progressive pattern of recurrent weak and strong beats or stresses in a word. The measure of rhythmic quantity is the meter.

SYLLABLE
A word, or part of a word, representing a single sound. 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. In modern English, word syllables are characterized as either accented or unaccented; in non-accentual languages such as classical Greek and Latin, syllables are classified as either long or short, depending on the the quantity of time it takes to pronounce them due to varying vowel lengths and consonant groupings. Thus, the distinction between accented and long syllables on the one hand, and unaccented and short syllables on the other, represents the difference between accentual verse and quantitive verse. The basis for syllabic verse is the count of syllables in a line. The word ‘the’ is one syllable, while the word ‘whis-per’ is two.

METER:
Can be recognized through varying patterns of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress. Compositions written in meter are verse. There are many possible patterns of verse. Each unit of stress and unstressed syllables is called a "foot." The following examples are culled from M. H. Abram's Glossary of Literary Terms, sixth edition, which has more information.

Iambic (the noun is "iamb")
A lightly stressed syllable followed by a heavily stressed syllable.
Example: "The cúrfew tólls the knéll of párting dáy" (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.")

Anapestic (the noun is "anapest")
Two light syllables followed by a stressed syllable: "The Assyrian came dówn like a wólf on the fóld." (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacherib."

Trochaic (the noun is "trochee")
A stressed followed by a light syllable: "Thére they áre, my fífty men and wómen."

Dactylic (the noun is "dactyl"):
A stressed syllable followed by two light syllables: "Éve, with her básket, was / Déep in the bélls and grass."Iambs and anapests, since the strong stress is at the end, are called "rising meter"; trochees and dactyls, with the strong stress at the beginning, are called "falling meter." Additionally, if a line ends in a standard iamb, with a final stressed syllable, it is said to have a masculine ending. If a line ends in a lightly stressed syllable, it is said to be feminine. To hear the difference, read the following examples out loud and listen to the final stress:

Masculine Ending
"'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

Feminine Ending
"'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the housing,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mousing."
We name a metric line according to the number of "feet" in it. If a line has four feet, it is tetrameter. If a line has five feet, it is pentameter. Six feet, hexameter, and so on. English verse tends to be pentameter, French verse tetrameter, and Greek verse, hexameter. When scanning a line, we might, for instance, describe the line as iambic pentameter (having five feet, with each foot tending to be a light syllable followed by heavy syllable).

ALLITERATION
Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others. For instance, the phrase "buckets of big blue berries" alliterates with the consonant b. Most frequently, the alliteration involves the sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity to each other.

RHYME
Rhyme is a matching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when their accented vowels and all succeeding consonants are identical. For instance, the word-pairs listed here are all rhymes: skating/dating, emotion/demotion, fascinate/deracinate, and plain/stain. Rhyming is frequently more than mere decoration in poetry. It helps to establish stanzaic form by marking the ends of lines, it is an aid in memorization when performing oral-formulaic literature, and it contributes to the sense of unity in a poem. The best rhymes delight because of the human fascination with varying patterned repetition, but a successful and unexpected rhyme can also surprise the reader (which is especially important in comic verse). They may also serve as a rhythmical device for intensifying meaning. There are many different types of rhyme.

NEAR RHYME
A rhyme in which the sounds are similar, but not exact, as in home and come or close and lose.

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). 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 inassonance and the repetition of consonant sounds in consonance and alliteration. Usually, but not always, rhymes occur at the ends of lines.