Literary Terms

Front 1

ad hominem argument

Back 1

an argument that appeals to emotion rather thatn reason;

Front 2

allegory

Back 2

the use of characters and/or story elements to symbolically represent an abstraction in addition to literal meaning; _Dante's Inferno_ is an allegory

Front 3

alliteration

Back 3

the repetition of sounds; "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers"

Front 4

allusion

Back 4

a direct or inderect reference to a presumably commonly known source; e.g. referring to a bible story

Front 5

ambiguity

Back 5

the multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word or phrase; e.g. "lie"

Front 6

analogy

Back 6

a similarity or comparison between two different things or the relationship between them; "a street light is like a star"

Front 7

antecedent

Back 7

the word phrase or clause referred to by a pronoun; "the girl who ran" "girl" is the antecedent

Front 8

aphorism

Back 8

a terse statement of known authorship which expresses a general truth or moral principle; "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" - Tennyson

Front 9

apostrophe

Back 9

A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or personified abstract; "Oh death where now is your power, oh death where now is your sting?" - The Bible

Front 10

atmosphere

Back 10

the emotional mood created by the entirety of a literary work; The landscape in _The Fall of the House of Usher_ creates a dark, gloomy atmosphere

Front 11

clause

Back 11

A grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb; "The dog barked" is a clause

Front 12

colloquial/colloquialism

Back 12

the use of slang or informalities in speech or writing; Rose of Sharon was "in the fambly way" in _The Grapes of Wrath_

Front 13

conceit

Back 13

a fanciful expression; usu. an odd or surprising comparison;

Front 14

connotation

Back 14

the nonliteral, associative meaning of a word; the implied suggestive meaning