Literary Terms Definitions Master List

Ballad—A song or poem that tells a story

Lyric Poetry—Poetry that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts and feelings

Alliteration—The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words

Repetition—A literary device in which sounds, words, phrases, lines, or stanzas are used more than once for emphasis in a poem or other literary work

Haiku—A Japanese form of poetry that has three lines and seventeen syllables

Rhyme—Words that sound alike; the repetition of the same stressed vowel sounds and any succeeding consonant sounds in two or more words

Rhyme Scheme—The pattern that end rhymes form in a stanza or poem

Rhythm—The pattern of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables; its measurement is meter