GCSE English Glossary

Learning Resources - English - GCSE English Glossary

AMAZING GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS WITH MARVELLOUS EXAMPLES       1                                                          

alliteration – repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words, e.g.

‘funny face’ or ‘cowardly custard’.  Note that sound, not spelling, is what matters: ‘philosophical fish’ is still an example of alliteration.

The similar sounds do not have to be right next to each other:

  ‘Then on a sudden, lo! the level lake,

   And the long glories of the winter moon.’  – Tennyson, ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’

assonance – repetition of the similar vowel sounds. These could be the same vowel sounds with different consonants, e.g. ‘blue moon’, ‘funny tummy’, or

the same consonants with different vowel sounds, e.g. ‘black block’, ‘sad Sid’.

E.g: ‘Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms’

                     - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Silent Noon’

context – something outside the text that affects its meaning, e.g. its historical context and/or its social context. Advances in science or transport, expectations of women, life expectancy, religious belief, whether or not there was a war on when it was written – these are examples of context.  If the poem is any good, though, it will stand on its own, i.e. it will give you something valuable even if it’s all alone on the page.  If you do know some context, use it as a torch to illuminate the poem.  Do not let it get in the way.  ‘The poem is king,’ as one examiner said. 

dialect words – a dialect is a form of language spoken in a particular area or by a particular social group.  ‘dialect words’ are examples of words or meanings that distinguish a dialect from standard English or from other dialects. This could be a word that only occurs in that dialect, e.g. ‘mardy’ in Yorkshire, West Midlands etc. meaning ‘grumpy, surly’. It could also be a word that occurs in standard English but with a different meaning in a dialect, e.g. ‘starved’ meaning cold in some Northern dialects of English.  Non-standard grammar also indicates dialect, e.g:

‘Old pirates, yes, they rob I;

 Sold I to the merchant ships’ – Bob Marley, ‘Redemption Song’

direct address – when a poem talks to us! E.g:

‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

             - Sonnet, William Shakespeare

‘Look in my face: my name is Might-Have-Been’

            - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘A Superscription’

dramatic monologue – an imaginary speaker addressing an imaginary audience, e.g. ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning.  Usually in iambic pentameter in a single stanza, i.e. no breaks.  The person just will not stop talking!

‘My Last Duchess’ is in iambic pentameters that rhyme in pairs.  These are called ‘rhyming couplets’.  Look out for the following:

a) words or phrases that imply a setting in which the speaker is talking:

e.g. ‘That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall’

b) words or phrases that imply a listener and perhaps their actions, too:

e.g.                             ‘Nay, we’ll go/Together down, sir.’

c) words or phrases that sound like a person talking, especially interjections:

e.g. ‘A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad’

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end-stopping – when there is a pause at the end of a line, usually a full stop:

‘To err is human; to forgive, divine.’ – Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’

enjambement – when a sentence runs over from one line of verse into the next. The word comes from the French word for leg: ‘la jambe’.

This is a poem about a line of ants

running along one twig and then another

twig and the enjambement reflects the

unending movement of the ants until one of them

stops.

That was end-stopping.

So is this.

form – the shape of the poem.  Some shapes have names, e.g. sonnet, ballad, dramatic monologue.  Others do not, but there will always be something that binds the poem together: a particular rhythm, rhymes and so on.  Think: why does this form, this shape, suit the subject and its treatment by the poet?

free verse – a poem with no regular rhythm or line length.

It can make you wonder: why do we call this a poem at all?

Isn’t it just someone deciding when

to start

a new line whenever they like

in a rather annoying and

pretentious

way?

Well, free verse can seem like that at first.  Read it aloud, though, or hear it in your head, and you can start to enjoy the way the poem’s movement suits what it describes:

‘Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven emulous waves,

Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with

    curves’

              - Walt Whitman, ‘After the Sea-ship’

half-rhyme – words that almost rhyme but not quite: very similar to assonance.

The effect can be unsettling, as in this war poem about two dead soldiers meeting underground:

  ‘It seemed that out of battle I escaped

   Down some profound, dull tunnel, long since scooped

   Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

   Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned…’

               - Wilfred Owen, ‘Strange Meeting’

Note: If you find ‘assonance’ and ‘half-rhyme’ confusing, yet you want to comment on a bit that almost rhymes, either term will do.  Most importantly, say what you think the effect is. Is it funny? Dreamlike? Unsettling?

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Above all, is it in any way like the thing it is describing? For example:

‘The half-rhyme here is funny: it emphasises the fact that the children sing out of tune.’ Remember that a sound effect can enhance, underline, emphasise and so on.  Sound alone, however, cannot  convey much.  You must know what the words mean for them to convey meaning to you!

hyperbole – deliberate exaggeration for effect. ‘I’ve told you a thousand times!’ is one annoying example.

iambic pentameter – a line of verse with five beats, which fall on the second syllable of each pair: ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM ti TUM

E.g. ‘Believe me, King of Shadows, I mistook!’

      - Puck, in deep trouble, pleading with Oberon in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Note: ‘iamb’ = ti TUM ‘pente’ = five in Greek.

imagery – language that describes something using at least one of the five senses.  Often this will be a mental image, but imagery can also describe a sound, a smell, a taste &c.  It is a very broad term indeed, and is also applied to figurative language such as metaphors and similes.  In fact, it is so broad a term that you may well be wondering: what is not imagery?  An abstract thing like a question, a thought, anything you know is there because it strikes your mind and not your senses: that is not imagery.  There is no imagery in this statement:

‘I thought about the question for a bit.’ There is imagery in this one:

‘A question formed in my mind, like smoke.’

literal and figurative language –

 Literal language means directly what it states. ‘I laughed a lot’ is literal.

 Figurative language does not mean directly what it states. ‘I laughed my head off’ is figurative. 

Note: metaphors, similes and personification are all examples of figurative language.

metaphor – an image which implies a comparison by stating that something is the thing it resembles.  ‘The sea was woman; the woman was the sea.’ – Ray Bradbury, in his short story, ‘The Shoreline at Sunset’, about some boys who find a mermaid.

non-standard English – a variety of English other than standard, e.g. Caribbean, Cockney, Scouse.  See ‘dialect’ above.

onomatopoiea – when the words sound like what they mean, e.g. ‘buzz,’ ‘crash’. Movement may also be imitated, e.g. ‘splishy-splashy fish’.

In poetry, the words often behave like what they describe. The sound of the words, their pace, rhythm, softness or harshness often reflect their meaning.

The poet Alexander Pope put it like this:

‘The sound must seem an echo to the sense.’ – ‘An Essay on Criticism’

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In poems, the words often behave like their subject: bouncy and springy when describing a spaniel puppy in springtime, heavy and plodding when describing an old man in winter.  (Of course other forms of writing such as novels can do this, but it would be wearying for a whole book!) If sound or movement are the main qualities imitated by the words, you can say the lines are onomatopoeic or that they use onomatopoeia. If in doubt, i.e. if it is not sound or movement but something else that the words imitate, you can use Pope’s phrase and say that the sound echoes the sense.  Either way, this is one of the most amazing things about poetry. See ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ by Wilfred Owen for a great example.

personification – describing something non-human as if it has human characteristics such as feelings. This could be an inanimate (non-living) object:

‘the broken toaster spat crumbs at me’. Or it could be an abstract idea, like love or truth, given a human form, e.g. ‘I laugh in the face of Danger and throw ice-cubes down the vest of Fear’ – ‘Blackadder’.  Also:

‘Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me…

 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
 Then have I reason to be fond of grief.’ 

 – Shakespeare, ‘King John’, probably written

after he lost his own eleven year-old son to the plague.

refrain – a recurring phrase or lines at the end of each stanza of poetry, like a one-line chorus. Can you think of a song you like that has a refrain?

rhyme scheme – the way rhymes within a poem are organised.  You write about this by using aabb, abab and so on. Each new letter represents a new sound. 

Rhymes bind a poem together. They also emphasise similarity or difference in the meanings of words.

rhyming couplets – two lines following each other which rhyme.  In a play, a rhyming couplet is often said by a character who is very certain of something.  This may be a bad decision he or she has just made!

rhythm – the arrangement of words to form a regular beat through a pattern of stresses. Rhythm is to poetry what the beat is to music.

sibilance - alliteration of the ‘s’ sound, e.g. ‘serious snakes stay sober’.

simile – a comparison between two things, using ‘like’ or ‘as’.

   ‘Her skin was soft as sable,

       Her eyes were wide as day,

    Her hair was blacker than the bog

    That licked her life away.’

       - Charles Causley, ‘The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond’

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sonnet – a poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter. 

Shakespearean sonnet – has a rhyming couplet at the end. E.g. Simon Armitage’s poem, ‘The Clown Punk’.

Petrarchan sonnet – has no rhyming couplet at the end.  Instead, there is a turn or ‘volta’ in the argument, around the eighth line. E.g. Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’.

speaker – the ‘voice’ that is speaking in a poem written in the first person.

Note: take care when deciding whether to write ‘speaker’ or ‘poet’.  The poet is the actual person who wrote the poem.  The speaker is the character within it: the one whom the poem is pretending to be!

If your poem is about a fish remembering his life, you could write this:

‘The voice of the speaker is full of sadness, until he remembers his first swim.  Here, the fish sounds….’

If you wanted to comment on the writer’s skill, you would write things like this:

‘The poet uses a bouncing rhythm and images of glitter to evoke the speaker’s memories of the salmon run.’

What you would not want to write is that ‘the fish uses alliteration’.  Hahaha!

stanza – a clearly demarcated part of a poem.  Another word for ‘verse’, really!

structure – how the poet has organised his or her work into patterns, e.g. the number of stanzas/verses and their length; the line lengths; the rhymes and the rhythms.  E.g. ‘This poem tells a story in three verses.  The first two are the same length but the third is very short, reflecting the sudden death of the fish.’

symbol – something used to stand for or represent something else. 

Note: a symbol is like a heavy-duty metaphor. It stands for something bigger than itself. E.g. the rose is often a symbol of love; the cross is a symbol of Christianity.

tone – the overall feeling or mood of a poem. 

Note: look out for any changes of tone and see how precise you can be about which word or phrase creates that change.

‘You were really nice,

 just like pudding rice,

 just like fluffy mice,

 then you stole my car

 and my fishtank

 and now you are like

 a really annoying wasp.’

From line four onwards, there are no pleasant adjectives, no rhymes and the rhythm is irregular.  All this emphasises the change of tone from friendly to angry in this brilliant poem by me. :o)

When you write an essay, you are writing prose: sentences and paragraphs. 

When you write a poem, you can choose shapes that suit what you are doing.

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In a sonnet, you might tackle a big question like ‘How do I deal with death?’ and try to come up with an answer by the end of the poem, e.g. ‘Well, this poem will outlast me!’ if you’re Shakespeare.

In a ballad, you can tell a story about a pirate ship or an evil witch and go on for as long as you like.  Each regular four-line verse tells a neat stage in the story.

In an ode, you can write your feelings of gratitude towards something nice like music or love or summer.  Odes are often in three stanzas: e.g. ‘To Autumn’ by John Keats. Not all, though: ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by Keats tells a beautiful, sad story, too.

Poems will be read differently by different readers.  Yet it is wrong to say that ‘there is no right or wrong in English’ and ‘you can say what you like as long as you prove it.’  Plainly, if you are writing about a poem in which the speaker mentions tying his shoelaces, you need to rethink your theory that the speaker is a dolphin.

Be flexible. Form a theory about a poem and take it back to the poem to see if it fits.  Does it illuminate something about the poem for you?  Look at the poem from different angles, lit up by other people’s views of the poem, as if it is a sculpture that you are walking around.  In a poetry essay, each paragraph should light up a different angle of the poem in a way that answers the question.  You cannot cover every angle, so choose a variety, to show how wide your range of thought can be.

Examiners love ambiguity and layers of meaning, just as dogs love bones.  So give it to them.  Instead of this:  ‘This is a poem about ham. It uses ham to symbolise life,’ be less blunt.  Allow for other possibilities:  ‘This poem describes ham in ways that evoke life, happiness, and health.  However, death is also implied: for the pig. The imagery and the lively rhythm create an overall sense that ham symbolises life, but death is present in the ‘pig’s grave gaze’ in line ten, emphasised by the pun on ‘grave’.’

In your conclusion, you can express a personal opinion that punches your essay home to the question. E.g. in an essay about fear, you could write:

‘The highlight of this poem for me was the entrance of the dragon with its pounding rhythm.  This was the most frightening poem in the anthology.’

Read poems now and again for pleasure.  There is a prevailing view that you must read poems out loud.  Yet the great poet and critic, T.S.Eliot, once wrote that ‘Poetry is words on a page with a great deal of silence.’ So do what you like.

Reading poems can make you appreciate, understand and enjoy your life more. 

So many things that we do become automatic. The faculty of wonder is often reserved for sunsets on holiday instead of a walk to school or work. We can pass trees, drink water and give hugs without savouring them.  Poetry is ‘language lit up by life or life lit up by language’ (Peter Porter, Radio 3).  It can stop us from living on automatic pilot; it can wake us up. Like mental windscreen wipers, poetry can reignite our perception and show us more of what Philip Larkin called ‘the million-petalled flower of being here.’

Alternative Glossary

Alliteration - the repetition of the same consonant sound, especially at the beginning of several consecutive words in the same line e.g. ‘Five miles meandering in a mazy motion’. (From ‘Kubla Khan’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

Aside – words spoken by a character on stage that are not intended to be heard by the other characters present

Assonance – the repetition of similar vowel sounds e.g. ‘There must be Gods thrown down and trumpets blown’ (From ‘Hyperion’ by John Keats), showing the paired assonance of ‘must’ and ‘trum...’ and ‘thrown’ and ‘blown’

Atmosphere – the pervading feeling created by a description of the setting, or the action e.g foreboding, happiness

Audience – the people being communicated to

Aural imagery – images created through sound, by the use of techniques such as alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia

Autobiography – an account of a person’s life written by him or herself

Biography – a written account or history of the life of an individual

Blank verse – unrhymed poetry that adheres to a strict pattern in that each line is an iambic pentameter (a ten-syllable line with five stresses). It is close to the rhythm of speech or prose

Characterisation – the variety of techniques that writers use to create and present their characters, including description of their appearance, their actions, their speech and how other characters react to them

Climax – The most important event in the story or play

Connotation – an association attached to a word or phrase in addition to its dictionary definition.

Denouement – near the ending of a play, novel, or drama, where the plot is resolved

Direct speech – the words that are actually spoken

Drama – a composition intended for performance before an audience

Dramatic incitement – the incident which provides the starting point for the main action of the play

Dramatic Irony – a situation in a play, the irony of which is clear to the audience but not to the characters e.g in Twelfth Night, where Olivia and Orsino do not know that ‘Cesario’ (Viola) is really a girl disguised as a boy

Episode – a scene within a narrative that develops or is connected to the main story

Exposition – the opening of the play which introduces characters and sets the scene

Fact – something which has been established as true and correct

Fiction – a story that is invented, not factual, though it may be based on events that actually happened

Form – the way a poem is structured or laid out

Free Verse – a form of poetry not using obvious rhyme patterns or a consistent metre

Iambic Pentameter – a line of verse containing five feet, each foot having an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

Imagery – the use of words to create a picture or image in the reader’s mind

Imperatives – commands

Interior monologue – similar to a soliloquy, a character talking to him or herself

Interview – a meeting between two people – e.g a journalist and a celebrity using questioning and discussion to ascertain information or for entertainment value

Irony – the conveyance of a meaning that is opposite to the literal meaning of the words, e.g ‘This is a fine time to tell me’, (when it is actually an inappropriate time); a situation or outcome which has a significance unforeseen at the time

Language of Advertising – features and techniques commonly found in advertising, e.g appealing adjectives, exaggeration

Metaphor – figure of speech in which a person or thing is describes as being the thing it resembles, e.g ‘she’s a tiger’ to describe a ferocious person

Mood - the atmosphere created by a piece of writing

Narration, first person – the telling of a story through the voice of a character, in their own words, e.g “I went to the fair, even though I hated it”

Narration, third person – the telling of a story through the voice of the author, describing the actions of the characters, e.g ‘He went to the fair, even though he hated it’

Narrative Structure – the way that a piece of story writing has been put together, for example, in a novel, the development of the plot through the arrangement of chapters and who is telling the story

Narrative techniques – the ways in which an author tells a story

Narrator – the person telling the story

Objective information – factual ideas

Onomatopoeia – when a word sounds like the noise it describes e.g ‘pop’ or ‘the murmuring of innumerable bees’

Opinion – a view held by some but not necessarily by others

Personification – the attribution of human qualities or feelings to inanimate objects; a kind of metaphor where human qualities are given to things or abstract ideas

Plot – the main story or scheme of connected events running through a play or novel

Poetic Voice – the ‘speaker’ of the poem – the ‘voice’ of the poem might be that of the poet but could be that of a character or persona from the poet’s imagination

Preview – a kind of report on a film, programme or book etc, soon to be released

Prose – any kind of writing which is not verse, usually divided into fiction and non-fiction
Purpose – the reason for the communication

Regular metre – a regular succession of groups of long and short, stressed and unstressed syllables in which poetry is often written

Review – usually a kind of report on a film, programme or book etc, already released

Rhetorical Question – question raised in speech that does not require an answer (used for effect)

Rhyme – corresponding sounds in words, often at the end of each line or within lines

Rhyming Couplet – two rhyming lines of verse

Rhythm – the ‘movement’ of a poem, as created by the metre and the way that language is stressed within the poem

Setting – the period of time and the place in which the story is set

Simile – figure of speech in which a person or thing is describes as being like another, usually preceded by ‘as’ or ‘like’, e.g ‘she’s like a tiger’ to describe a ferocious person

Snapshots – separate descriptions of the stages in a sequence

Soliloquy – a speech in which a character in a play, expresses their thoughts and feelings aloud for the benefit of the audience, but not for the other characters, often in a revealing way

Stanza – the blocks of lines into which a poem is divided, forming a definite pattern

Stream of Consciousness – a narrative form where random thoughts give the impression that the words have spilled straight from the narrator’s mind

Structure – the way that a piece of story writing has been put together, for example, in a novel, the development of the plot through the arrangement of chapters

Style – (literary) the particular way in which writers use language to express their ideas

Subjective information – personal opinions and feelings

Sub-Plot – a less important part of a story, that is connected to and develops the main plot

Symbolism – similar to imagery: symbols are things that represent something else e.g red roses are given to loved ones because they symbolise love

Theme – a central idea that the writer explores through a text, e.g love, loss, revenge

Tone – created through the combined effects of the author’s rhythm and diction

Voice – the speaker of the poem or prose, either the poet or author’s own voice or that of an invented character