ALPHABETICAL LISTING

ACCENT - The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word.

ADJECTIVE - A word used to limit or qualify a noun; one of the eight traditional parts of speech.

ALEXANDRINE - A line of poetry that contains 12 syllables.

ANTONYM - A word opposed in meaning to another, as the English words young, old; opposed to synonym.

APHORISM - A brief statement containing an important truth or fundamental principle.

APOLOGUE - An allegorical narrative such as a fable, usually intended to convey a moral or a useful truth.

APOSIOPESIS - Stopping short of a complete thought for effect, thus calling attention to it.

APOSTROPHE - Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea.

ASSONANCE - Resemblance in sound; specifically, in prosody, correspondence of the accented vowels, but not of the consonants, as in main, came.

BALLAD - A narrative poem or song of popular origin in short stanzas, often with a refrain.

BLANK VERSE - Without rhyme or set stanzas.

BURLESQUE - Ludicrous imitation or representation of serious literary work; broad caricature; travesty.

BUCOLIC - A pastoral poem. refer to Pastoral

CAESURA - In prosody, a break or pause in the middle of a foot, usually near the middle of a verse.

CANZONE - A medieval Italian lyric poem, with five or six stanzas and a shorter concluding stanza.

CONSONANCE - Harmony.

DECASYLLABLE - A line of verse having ten syllables - decasyllabic (adj.)

DRAMATIC LYRIC - Emphasis is placed upon the poem's subject rather than the speaker. (Speaker: addresses one or more silent auditors; recognised indirectly by the reader.)

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE - Lyric poem in which the speaker is a persona; created by the poet.

ECLOGUE - A poem of a Shepherd.

ELEGY - A mediative poem with sorrowful theme. (common definition since 17^th Century.)

EPIC - A poem celebrating in stately, formal verse the achievements of heroes, gods and demigods: also heroic epic. Example: Homer's Iliad & Odyssey & Vergil's Aeneid.

EPIGRAM - A short, pithy poem, especially one ending with a caustic point.

EPITHALAMIUM - A poem in honour of a bride and bridegroom.

ENVOY - The shorter final stanza of a poem, as in a ballade.

FOOT - Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem.

FREE VERSE - Verse depending for its poetic effect upon irregular rhythmical pattern, either absence or irregularity of rhyme, and the use of cadenced speech rhythms rather than conventional verse forms.

HAIKU - A poem in imitation of a Japanese verse form, consisting of three lines of five, seven, five syllables respectively.

HEPTAMETER - A line of poetry that has seven metrical feet.

HEXAMETER - A line of poetry that has six metrical feet.

HYPERBOLE - A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis.

IDYL - A short poem or prose piece depicting simple scenes of pastoral, domestic, or country life; also a more descriptive or narrative poem.

IAMB - A metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long (or stressed).

INTERNAL RHYME - The rhyming of a word or group of syllables in a line or verse, as the word before the caesura, with a word or group of syllables at the end of the line or another line: also called leonine rhyme.

LAY - A long narrative poem.

LIMERICK - A light, humorous poem of five usually anapaestic lines with the rhyme scheme of aabba.

LITOTES - A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite.

LYRIC - Characterising verse expressing the poets' personal emotions or sentiments; songlike: distinguished from epic, dramatic.

METAPHOR - A figure of speech in which one object is likened to another by speaking of it as if it were that other: distinguished from simile by not employing any word of comparison, such as 'like' or 'as'.

METAPHRAST - One who renders poetry into prose or prose into poetry, or changes the metre or verse.

METONYMY - A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. Example: "The pen is mightier than the sword." The word pen is used for the "written words" and sword is used for "military power".

MIXED METAPHOR - Figurative language in which incongruous and often contradictory, metaphors are used; confusion of figurative with plain statement.

NARRATIVE POEM - Continuous account of an event, or series of events.

NEAR RHYME - In prosody, a more or less radical substitute for rhyme, including such devices as assonance and consonance: also called paraphone, half rhyme, oblique rhyme.

NOUN - A word used as the name of a thing, quality, or action existing or conceived by the mind; a substantive. A proper noun is the name of an individual person, place or thing. A common noun is the name an individual object has in common with others of its class, as man, city, hill; a collective noun is one expressing a collection or aggregate of individuals, as assembly, army; an abstract noun is one indicating a quality, as goodness, beauty.

OCTOSYLLABIC - Composed of eight syllables as a line of verse - octosyllable (n.)

ODE - A lyric poem, rhymed or unrhymed, of lofty tone, treating progressively one dignified theme, often in the form of an address.

ONOMATOPOEIA - A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clipperty-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump and tick-tock.

OXYMORON - A figure of speech consisting of contradictory terms brought together sharply, as in the phrase: "O heavy lightness, serious vanity."

PARADOX - A statement, doctrine, or expression seemingly absurd or contradictory to common notions or to what would naturally be believed, but in fact really true.

PASTORAL - A poem dealing with rural matters; a bucolic; an idyl.

PENTAMETER - A line of poetry that contains five metrical feet.

PERSONA - Literally, person; specifically, a character in a drama, novel, poem etc.

PERSONIFICATION - The figurative endowment of inanimate objects or qualities with personality or human attributes.

POEM - A composition in verse either in metre or in free verse, characterised by the imaginative treatment of experience and a heightened use of language, more intensive than ordinary speech.

POESY - Poetic Poetry taken collectively.

POETASTER - An inferior poet; a mere rhymer or writer of mediocre verse.

POETIC - Pertaining to poetry; having the nature or quality of /or expressed in poetry: a poetic theme.

POETIC LICENSE - The departure from the rules of diction, pronunciation, or from what is generally regarded as fact, for the sake of rhyme, metre, or an overall enhancement of effect.

POETICS - The principles and nature of poetry or, by extension of any art.

POETIZE - To write poetry.

POETRY - The writing of poems; the art by which the poet projects feeling and experience onto an imaginative plane, in rhythmical words, to stir the imagination and the emotions.

PROSODY - The science or study of poetic metres and versification.

QUATRAIN - A stanza or poem of four lines.

REFRAIN - A phrase, line or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.

RHYME - A correspondence of sounds in two or more words, especially at the ends of lines of poetry.

SCANSION - The analysis of a poem's meter.

SENRYU - A short Japanese poem that is similar to a haiku in structure but treats human beings rather than nature, often in a humorous or satiric way.

SIMILE - A rhetorical figure expressing comparison or likeness, by the use of such terms as 'like', 'as', 'so' etc.

SONNET - A poem of fourteen decasyllabic or (rarely) octosyllabic lines, originally composed of an octave and a sestet, properly expressing two successive phases of a single thought or sentiment.
(Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet) the rhyme scheme for the octave is abbaabba, followed by two or three other rhymes in the sestet, with a slight change in thought after the octave.
(Elizabethan, or Shakespearian sonnet) the rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg

SPONDEE - A metrical foot of two syllables, both of which are long (or stressed).

STRESSES - The emphasis placed on a particular syllable or word as part of the rhythm of a poem or line. Associated with sonnets.

SYLLABLE - A word or part of a word uttered in a single vocal impulse, and consisting of a vowel alone or with one or more consonants, or of a syllabic consonant. An open syllable is one ending in a vowel, as the first syllable of si-lent; a closed syllable is one ending in a consonant, as the first and third syllables of cat-a-pult.

SYNECDOCHE - A figure of speech in which a part is used to designate the whole or the whole is used to designate a part. Example: "All hands on deck" means "all men on deck", not jus their hands. The reverse situation in which the whole is used for a part; "Australia defeated South Africa in the final test match, where Australia and South Africa stand for the "Australian team" and the "South African team".

SYNONYM - A word having the same or almost the same meaning as some other; hence one of a number of words that have one or more meanings in common: opposite of antonym.

TANKA - A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the rest of seven.

TERMINAL RHYME - The rhyming of a word or group of syllables at the end of a verse with that of another verse in the same stanza or poem.

TETRAMETER - A line of poetry that contains four metrical feet.

TROCHEE - A metrical foot of two syllables, one long (stressed) and one short (unstressed).

TROPE - A figure of speech, such as a metaphor or metonymy, in which words are not used in their literal (or actual) sense, but in a figurative or imaginative sense.

VERB - One of a class of words which assert, declare, or predicate something; that part of speech which expresses existence, action, or occurrence, as the English words be, collide, think.

VERSE - A single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general (as opposed to prose).

VERSIFICATION - The system of rhyme and meter in poetry.

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.