Poetic Terms - What do you know?

A figure of speech in which two things are compared usually by saying one thing is another.

‘The child was our prayer to an empty sky.’

• metaphor

• simile

• enjambment

• personification

Words are used to imitate sounds.

‘buzz, hiss, crash’

• metaphor

• onomatopoeia

• enjambment

• assonance

The repetition of the same sounds often at the beginning of words.   

 

‘While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping…’

• onomatopoeia

• assonance

• alliteration

• anaphora

Where non-human things or abstract ideas are given human characteristics. 

‘The ocean heaved a sigh’

‘Silence crept into the room.’

• zoomorphism

• metaphor

• personification

• anthropomorphism

Where a writer keeps using the same words/ideas: 

‘And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep’

• repetition

• assonance

• alliteration

• hypophora

Where two things are compared using as or like. 

 

      ‘Her eyes were like the timeless eyes of a statue.’

• metaphor

• personification

• extended metaphor

• simile

Writers use this type of language to create pictures with words.

‘The burnt out ends of smoky days’

• declarative

• imagery

• rhetorical question

• assonance

Repetition of consonant sounds in the middle of words, or the middle or end of a line

‘bitter banter; chitter and chatter’ 

‘he struck a streak of bad luck’

• alliteration

• assonance

• consonance

• sibilance

Repetition of the same vowel sounds in a line

‘Hear the mellow wedding bells’

‘In the silence of the night’

• alliteration

• assonance

• consonance

• plosives

Continuation of a complete thought/idea from one line to the next

‘April is the cruelest month

breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land…’ 

• caesura

• enjambment

• end-stopping

• rhyme