Literary Terms
1. Alliteration - The repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds
in words that are close together.
2. Allusion - A reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from
literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, or science.
3. Autobiography - The story of a real person’s life, written or told by that
person.
4. Biography – The story of a real person’s life, written or told by a
different person.
5. Character – A person, or an animal in a story, play, or other literary work.
6. Conflict (External)– A struggle or clash of two opposing characters or
opposing forces.
7. Conflict (Internal)– A struggle or clash within ones self.
8. Connotations – The feelings and associations that have come to be attached
to a word.
9. Description – The kind of word that creates a clear image of something,
usually by using details that appeal to one or more of the senses: sight,
hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
10. Dialect – A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region
or group of people.
11. Dialogue – Conversation between two or more characters.
12. Drama – A story written to be acted in front of an audience.
13. Essay – A short piece of nonfiction prose.
14. Fable – A very brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral, a
particular lesson about how to succeed in life.
15. Fantasy – Imaginative writing that carries the reader into an invented
world where the laws of nature as we know them do not operate.
16. Fiction – A prose account that is made up rather than true.
17. Figurative Language – Language that describes one thing in terms of
something else and is not literally true.
18. Flashback – A scene that breaks the normal time order of the plot to show
a past event.
19. Folktale – A story with no know author, originally passed on from one
generation to another by word of mouth.
20. Foreshadowing – The use of clues or hints to suggest events that will
occur later in the plot.
21. Free Verse – Poetry that is “free” of a regular meter and rhyme scene.
22. Imagery – Language that appeals to the senses: sight, hearing, touch,
taste, and smell.
23. Irony – A contrast between what is expected and what really happens.
24. Legend – A story, usually based on some historical fact that has been
handed down from one generation to the next.
25. Limerick- A humorous five line verse that has a regular meter and the
rhyme scheme aabba.
26. Main Idea- The most important idea in a piece of writing.
27. Metaphor- A comparison between two unlike things in which one thing
becomes another thing.
28. Mood- The overall emotion created by a work of literature.
29. Myth- A story that usually explains something about the world and involves
gods and superheroes.
30. Narration- The kind of writing that relates a series of events to tell,
“what happened”
31. Nonfiction- Prose writing that deals with real people, events and places
without changing any facts.
32. Novel- A long fictional story that is usually more than one hundred pages
in length.
33. Novella- Between (20 to 100 pages in length) is a written, fictional prose
narrative longer than a short story and shorter than a novel.
34. Onomatopoeia- The use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning.
35. Oral tradition- A collection of folk tales songs and poems that have been
passed on orally from generation to generation.
36. Paraphrase- A restatement of a written work in which the meaning is
expressed in other words.
37. Personification- A special kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman or
nonliving thing or quality is talked about as if it were human or alive.
38. Plot- The series of related events that make up a story.
39. Poetry- A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of
speech and imagery to appeal to emotion and imagination.
40. Point of view- The vantage point from which a story is told.
41. Prose- Any writing that is not poetry.
42. Refrain- A repeated word, phrase, line or group of lines in a poem or song
or even a speech.
43. Rhyme- The repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them.
44. Rhythm- A musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and
unstressed syllables or by the repetition of other sound patterns.
45. Setting- The time and place of a story, poem, or a play.
46. Short story- A fictional prose narrative that is about five to twenty book
pages long.
47. Simile- A comparison between two unlike things using a word such as like,
as, than or resembles.
48. Speaker- The voice talking to us in a poem.
49. Stanza- In a poem, a group of lines that form a unit.
50. Suspense- The anxious curiosity the reader feels about what will happen
next in a story.
51. Symbol- A person, a place, a thing or an event that has its own meaning
and stands for something beyond itself as well.
52. Tall tale- An exaggerated, fanciful story that or more far-fetched, the
more it is told and retold.
53. Theme- A truth about life revealed in a work of literature.
54. Tone- The attitude a writer takes toward an audience, a subject or a
character.
55. Author’s purpose- To inform, to persuade, to express feelings or to
entertain.
56. Cause - The reason something happens
57. Effect - what happens as a result of the cause.
58. Chronological Order- The order which events happen.
59. Comparison- Similarities
60. Contrast -Differences
61. Context Clues- Looking at the text to find the meaning of the word you
don’t know.
62. Evaluating Evidence- When you read informational text, you need to
appraise the writer’s proof for the text.
63. Evidence- the support or proof that backs up and idea.
64. Fact - Something that can be proved through truth.
65. Opinion- Expresses a personal belief or feeling. Can’t be proven.
66. Generalization- A broad statement based on several particular situations.
67. Graphic Features- Heading’s, maps, charts, tables, diagrams, and
illustrations.
68. Inference- An educated guess.
69. Note Taking- They don’t have to be in complete sentences. Also, they are
the important ideas.
70. Outlining- Helps you identify ideas and helps you understand how they are
connected or related to each other.
71. Persuasion- The use of language or visual images to get you to believe
something.
72. Prior Knowledge- What you know about a subject when your at the starting
line-before you read a selection
73. Propaganda-An organized attempted to persuade people to accept certain
ideas or to take certain actions.
74. Retelling- A reading strategy that helps you recall and understand the
major events in a story.
75. Summarizing- When you restate the author’s main points in your own words.
76. Text Structures- Understanding the way a text is structured, or organized,
can help you follow the writer’s idea.
77. Excerpt- a passage or paragraph taken from a book
78. Support- gives aid or assistance, helps
79. Source- where information is coming from (book, person,
statement)
80. Convey- to show, to communicate, to make known
81. Make a claim- saying something is a fact