"Discover the language of poetry, from alliteration to zeugma."
| Term | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Cacophony | A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds. | "With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call." |
| Caesura | A pause in a line of verse, often near the middle. | "To err is human; || to forgive, divine." |
| Caesura | A break between words within a metrical foot. | The poet used a caesura to add a dramatic pause. |
| Carpe Diem | A theme in poetry that encourages readers to seize the day and make the most of the present moment. | Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" is a classic carpe diem poem. |
| Chiasmus | A rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures. | "Never let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You." |
| Clerihew | A whimsical, four-line biographical poem with an AABB rhyme scheme. | "Sir Humphry Davy Abominated gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium." |
| Conceit | An extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. | John Donne's poem "The Flea" uses a conceit to compare a flea bite to the act of love. |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds, typically at the end of words. | "The lumpy, bumpy road." |
| Consonance | The recurrence of similar sounds, especially consonants, in close proximity. | The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew. |
| Couplet | Two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit. | The time is out of joint, O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right! |
Our comprehensive Poetry Glossary, designed for students, teachers, and poetry enthusiasts alike. Whether you're delving into poetic forms, exploring rhyme schemes, or understanding the nuances of metrical feet, our glossary is an essential resource to enhance your study of poetry.
Our glossary covers a wide range of poetry terms, from alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds, to the structure of free verse, which flows without a fixed metrical pattern. Learn about how stressed and unstressed syllables form the foundation of metrical feet, or explore how a rhyme scheme organizes the pattern of sounds at the end of lines in a poem.
Use the search function to quickly find terms like group of lines in a stanza or the repetition of sounds in a poem or section. Whether you're looking to understand how a series of words creates rhythmic patterns or how the number of syllables affects the flow of a line of poetry, our glossary has the definitions and examples you need.