English Language Glossary

·       Allegory: a symbolic tale which often conveys a lesson or moral

·       Alliteration: the repetition of sounds at the beginning of words 'blast-beruffled plume'

·       Allusion: a reference to something beyond the text which is designed to affect and to be understood by the reader

·       Analogy: a comparison or example designed to emphasise similarities

·       Antonym: a word that means the opposite of another word

·       Antithesis: the deliberate contrasting of opposed pairs

·       Assonance: repetition of the same vowel sound followed by different consonant sounds. Strong rhyme: brine, line; weak rhyme: side, lied

·       Audience: the person or person to whom the text is addressed

·       Ballad: a poetic form, usually of simple for-line stanzas and often telling a story

·       Caesura: a pause or stop for effect within a line of poetry

·       Characterisation: the ways in which a writer presents a character to the reader- though dialogue, direct description, contrast with other characters

·       Chronological: arranged according to the order of time

·       Cliché: an expression that has become 'worn out' or meaningless from being used too often

·       Colloquialism: colloquial language is the language of everyday speech and often includes slang

·       Compound word: two words linked together to create a new word, 'After-comers'

·       Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds, not just the start of words 'corpse', 'crypt'

·       Contrast: the placing together of dissimilar things to emphasise their differences

·       Couplet: two lines of poetry, paired together often by rhyme. 

·       Dialect: a regional and usually spoken form of language which differs from Standard English and is often associated with a regional accent. 

·       Dialogue: the words spoken by characters in stories or poems, in the form of direct speech

·       Dramatic monologue: a poem in the form of a speaker addressing an unseen/unheard audience

·       Enjambment: the running-on from one line of poetry to the next without pause. Enjambment is more worthy of comment when lines are run on across stanza breaks

·       Exclamation: an abrupt, loud or heightened utterance often indicated by an exclamation mark!

·       Euphemism: the use of a mild, inoffensive expression for something which is unpleasant or embarrassing

·       Fable: a legend or a story that usually has a moral lesson

·       Figurative language: the broad term for all figures of speech which go beyond literal meanings

·       Form: the type, pattern, shape or layout of a poem

·       Genre: a type of literature

·       Half-rhyme: a technique used in poetry in which the words do not quite rhyme 'rest/wrist'

·       Iambic pentameter: a rhythm in a line of poetry which has five weakly stressed syllables each followed by give strongly stress syllables.De dum de dum...

·       Imagery: images used by writers in which a picture, feeling or sense-impression is conveyed in words

·       Imperative: an order, command or instruction. 

·       Irony: when there is difference between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. 

·       Juxtaposition: the placing together of words and ideas for a particular effect

·       Lyric: originally a poem which was meant to be sung

·       Metaphor: an image which describes one thing in terms of a very different thing but without making the link as obvious as in a simile