ENG220: terminology for talking about verse


T You can find definitions of most of these terms in the "useful resources" for the in-class essay (and in other books like the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics). Adams is particularly good.

Words

connotation

denotation

polysemy ("diversity of meaning")

register (or "variety" of language)

Figures of balance and parallelism

anaphora

antithesis

catalogue

chiasmus

parallelism

Figurative language, figures of speech

analogue (="vehicle")

apostrophe ("Thou ... bride...")

conceit

hyperbole

irony

implicit metaphor

metaphor

metonymy

oxymoron

paradox

personification

simile

subject (="tenor")

synecdoche

Imagery

auditory imagery

gustatory imagery

kinesthetic imagery

olfactory imagery

tactile imagery

thermal imagery

Rhyme and rhythm

couplet

eye-rhyme

feminine ending/rhyme

internal rhyme

masculine ending/rhyme

near rhyme (=off/slant/pararhyme)

rhyme

accentual-syllabic metre

binary meter

(e.g., iamb/trochee)

blank verse

caesura

end-stopped

enjambment

foot

iambic/iamb

pyrrhic

spondaic/spondee

trochaic/trochee

metre

pentameter

substitution

tetrameter

trimeter

Sounds

alliteration

assonance

cacophony

consonance

dissonance

onomatopoiea

consonants

affricatives (ch, dg/j)

aspirate (h)

fricative (f, s, th)

glide (y, w)

liquid consonants (l, r)

nasal (e.g., n, m, ng)

sibillant (e.g., s, z, sh, zh)

stops (e.g., p, b, t, d, k, g)

voiced (e.g., /b/, /d/, /g/)

voiceless (e.g., /p/, /t/, /k/)