J - P Flashcards
Jargon
Use of specific, technical language within a certain profession or situation.
Juxtaposition
Two opposing instances placed next to each other in order to highlight their differences.
Litotes
An understatement in which a positive statement is expressed by negating it’s opposite.
Malapropism
The use of an incorrect word in the place of a similar-sounding word in order to create a nonsensical effect.
Meiosis
A witty understatement that belittles and dismisses someone or something.
Metaphor
A comparison of two ideas or things, without the words ‘like’ or ‘as’.
Motif
An object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work.
Onomatopoeia
A word describing a sound, that is identical to the sound it’s describing.
Oxymoron
A pair of words or phrases of contradictory meaning put together for emphasis and tension.
Paradox
An apparent contradiction that may contain truth upon further unravelling, intended for effect upon the reader.
Parenthesis
A clause inserted into a passage by an author that doesn’t grammatically affect the text - usually marked by brackets, dashes or commas.
Pathetic Fallacy
The attribution of human qualities to inanimate things - typically things of nature, like the weather.
Personification
A non-human idea or subject described with human qualities.
Polyptoton
A rhetorical repetition of the same root word ie drift and drifting.
Polysyndeton
The separation of words or clauses with conjunctions that aren’t necessary - typically the word “and”.
Note: this is the opposite of asyndeton.
