Glossary extracted starting with manual seeds, with PTM for the domain lit and language EN
| poet laureate | Apollo degreed that poets should receive laurels as a prize |
| terza rima | A terza riman is a type of poetry consisting of 10- or 11-syllable lines arranged in three-line tercets with the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc, etc |
| gallery | The elevated seating areas at the back and sides of a theater. |
| epigraph | A quotation, taken from another literary work, that is placed at the start of a poem under the title |
| end-stopped line | a line of verse that contains or concludes a complete clause and usually ends with a punctuation mark |
| perfect rhyme | Also called true rhyme or exact rhyme, a rhyme which meets the following requirements: (1) an exact correspondence in the vowel sound and, in words ending in consonants, the sound of the final consonant, (2) a difference in the consonant sounds preceding the vowel, and (3) a similarity of accent on the rhyming syllable(s). |
| cross | 1 |
| caroline | Literature of the reign of Charles I (1625-42), especially the by the Calvalier poets, who numbered Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and John Suckling, among others. |
| monograph | A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author |
| rhythm | A rhythm is a uniform or patterned recurrence of beat, accent or similar |
| analects | Lunyu (English: Analects) (simplified Chinese: 论语; traditional Chinese: 論語; pinyin: Lún Yǔ), also known as the Analects of Confucius, are considered a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius and his disciples, as well as the discussions they held. |
| dramatist | the author of a play. |
| homonym | One of two or more words which are identical in pronunciation and spelling, but different in meaning, as the noun bear and the verb bear. |
| asyndeton | The artistic elimination of conjunctions in a sentence to create a particular effect |
| nominal clause | See "noun clause." |
| particular setting | see setting. |
| heptameter | Seven feet per line. |
| triple rhyme | A rhyme in which three final syllables of words have the same sound, as in glorious and victorious. |
| epiphany | Christian thinkers used this term to signify a manifestation of God's presence in the world |
| ionic | A Classical Greek and Latin double foot consisting of two unstressed syllables and two stressed syllables, either ionic a majore / ' ' ~ ~ / or ionic a minore / ~ ~ ' ' /. |
| bretan lay | Brief narrative poems about Arthurian subjects |
| carpe diem | Latin phrase meaning “seize the day.” The original carpe diem poem was an ode written by the Latin poet Horace. |
| swing | A member of the singing and dancing chorus who is prepared to fill in for another performer who is unable to perform. |
| baroque | Baroque (pronounced /bəˈroʊk/ bə-rohk in American English or /bəˈrɒk/ in British English) is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century in Europe |
| catalogue verse | Poems with lists that perform an encyclopedic purpose, lending high seriousness to a topic |
| unit of action | A distinct division of action marked by a significant change in the course of action. |
| reverse angle shot | A shot taken in the direction opposite that of the preceding shot |
| allegory | (Greek, ‘speaking otherwise’) |
| explication de texte | Explication de Texte is a French formalist method of literary analysis that allows for limited reader response, similar to close reading in the English-speaking literary tradition |
| strophe | one section of a lyric poem or choral ode in classical Greek drama |
| neorealism | A film style which uses documentary filmmaking techniques to produce a fictional situation. |
| object predicative | An adjective, noun phrase, or prepositional phrase that qualifies, describes, or renames the object that appears before it. |
| lyric verse | One of the three main groups of poetry, the others being narrative and dramatic |
| trimeter | A three-foot line in metrical verse. |
| monometer | One foot; sometimes termed monopody, a single foot, one measure made up of one foot |
| internal rhyme | See Rhyme. |
| anapaest | see |
| proverb | A proverb (from Latin: proverbium) is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity |
| pentameter | Five feet; sometimes termed pentapody, a five-part foot, one measure made up of five feet |
| repetition | Repetition is the simple repeating of a word, within a sentence or a poetical line, with no particular placement of the words, in order to emphasize |
| modifier | A word, phrase, or clause that functions as an adjective or adverb to limit or qualify the meaning of another word or word group. |
| synonym | One of two or more words that are similar in meaning. |
| analogy | in Rhetoric |
| border batten | See Batten |
| ode | A type of lyric or melic verse, usually irregular rather than uniform, generally of considerable length and sometimes continuous, sometimes divided in accordance with transitions of thought and mood in a complexity of stanzaic forms; it often has varying iambic line lengths with no fixed system of rhyme schemes and is always marked by the rich, intense expression of an elevated thought, often addressed to a praised person or object. |
| connotation | what is suggested by a word, apart from what it literally means or how it is defined in the dictionary |
| connotation | The attitudes and feelings associated with a word |
| diffuse reflection | the process by which incident flux is redirected over a range of angles. |
| metastasis | A rhetorical term for shifting responsibility or blame, or turning an objection back against itself. |
| katharsis | An alternative spelling of catharsis (see above). |
| assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in a line or series of lines |
| image | An expression that describes a literal sensation, whether of hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and feeling. |
| end-stopped | Denoting a line of verse in which a logical or rhetorical pause occurs at the end of the line, usually marked with a period, comma, or semicolon. |
| dramatis personae | the characters in a play |
| octameter | A line of verse consisting of eight metrical feet. |
| syntax | The arrangement of linguistic elements in arbitrary but conventional sequences. |
| allargando | Getting broader. |
| colloquialism | This is a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English |
| chronological | The presentation of ideas or events in their normal historical order. |
| foot | A foot is a group of two or more syllables in which one syllable has the major stress, forming the basic unit of poetic rhythm. |
| network | A regional or national organization which offers member broadcast stations programs and other services. |
| straight part | A part played without character make-up |
| allusion | An implied or indirect reference to something assumed to be known, such as a historical event or personage, a well-known quotation from literature, or a famous work of art, such as Keats' allusion to Titian's painting of Bacchus in "Ode to a Nightingale." |
| anthology | An anthology is collection of poems, stories, songs etc chosen by the compiler |
| chant royale | A complex French form of the ballade, having various forms. |
| reader time | see time |
| homograph | One of two or more words spelled alike but different in meaning and derivation or pronunciation |
| director | the person who leads a show |
| apostrophe | Words that are spoken to a person who is absent of imaginary, or to an object or abstact idea. |
| sea shanty | Sea shanties (singular "shanty", also spelled "chantey"; derived from the French word "chanter", 'to sing') were shipboard working songs |
| tone | The attitude taken in or by a poem toward the subject and theme. |
| mood | In essays and other literary works, mood is the dominant impression or emotional atmosphere evoked by the text. |
| narration | Writing that relates an event or a series of events; a story |
| notes | Comments about a performance. |
| rhythm | The uniform reoccurrence of an element, such as strong and weak accents and long and short syllables, to create a particular sound. |
| pararhyme | In poetry, a partial or imperfect rhyme, where the consonants rhyme but not the vowels |
| dimeter | two feet in a line |
| pathetic fallacy | The ascribing of human traits or feelings to inanimate nature for eloquent effect, especially feelings in sympathy with those expressed or experienced by the writer, as a "cruel wind," a "pitiless storm," or the lines from Shelley's Adonais: |
| voice | the verbal aspect of point of view, the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of a story’s words; the speaker; the "person" telling the story and that person’s particular qualities of insight, attitude, and verbal style |
| production report | A daily report of the actual progress of a production. |
| miracle of the virgin | A vita or a miracle play that dramatizes some aspect of humanity activity, and ends with the miraculous intervention of the Blessed Virgin |
| heptameter | Heptameter is one or more lines of verse containing seven metrical feet (usually fourteen or twenty-one syllables). |
| line | A unit in the structure of a poem consisting of one or more words arranged together. |
| lamp | an electric-discharge lamp in which the light-producing arc is stabilized by wall temperature |
| antithesis | A figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings are balanced against each other. |
| stress | A long vowel sound or the accented syllable of a word. |
| connotation | An indirect implication or suggestion from a word, or string of words, beyond the literal meaning |
| allusion | A reference in literature, or in visual or performing arts, to a familiar person, place, thing, or event |
| rime couée | The French term for tail-rhyme |
| verse | A verse is a single metrical line of poetry. |
| biographical criticism | an approach to literature which suggests that knowledge of the author's life experiences can aid in the understanding of his or her work |
| bard | An ancient composer, singer or declaimer of epic verse, celebrating the deeds of gods and heroes. |
| reflective poem/structure | a poem organized primarily around reflection on a subject or event and letting the mind play with it, skipping from one thought or object to another as the mind receives them. |
| auditory imagery | Descriptive language that evokes noise, music, or other sounds |
| syzygy | (Greek, ‘yoke’) |
| hudibrastic poetry | Iambic tetrameter couplets like those in Samuel Butler's Hudibras. |
| letters - intellectual | An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence (thought and reason) and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity. |
| rhyming slang | A slang popular in Great Britain in the early part of the 20th century, in which a word was replaced by a word or phrase that rhymed with it, as loaf of bread for head |
| slack | Unstressed syllable. |
| spike | 1 |
| ballad | a form of verse, often a narrative and set to music; may have refrain; usually 4 lines to a stanza |
| epode | An epode is the last of three series of lines forming the divisions of each section of a Pindaric ode. |
| commentary | A term which is often used in examinations or assessments |
| monometer | one foot in a line |
| flourisher | In medieval times, this was a professional artist who works in conjunction with illuminators and rubricators to design pen-work decoration on initials and /or flourishwork on the borders of decorated books |
| moral | The lesson taught in a work such as a fable; a simple type of theme |
| frame narrative | see narrative |
| premiere | The first performance of a play |
| sides | Pages from a script used for auditions. |
| fluency | Automatic word recognition, rapid decoding, and checking for meaning. |
| frame | An individual picture image on a film print . |
| hexameter | A line consisting of six metrical feet |
| verse | Language given rhythmic order and arranged into lines. |
| kitsch | Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value |
| broadside | Single sheet of paper upon which poetry is printed |
| verisimilitude | The sense that what one reads is "real," or at least realistic and believable |
| vulgate | The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin version of the Bible, and largely the result of the labors of St |
| denotative and connotative language | Describes the meaning and the emotions evoked by certain language, unlike concrete language. |
| hero/heroine | A mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent who is endowed with great strength or ability |
| author | The person entitled to hold a copyright. |
| closure | The effect of finality, balance, and completeness that leaves the reader with a sense of fulfilled expectations. |
| dialogue | A verbal exchange between two or more people. |
| pun | see paronomasia. |
| idiosyncratic | Idiosyncratic means a structural or behavioural characteristic peculiar to an individual or group. |
| verse paragraph | Verse paragraphs are stanzas with no regular number of lines or groups of lines that make up units of sense |
| mind map | a visual diagram in which similar concepts, topic threads and tangents, and other information are clustered together |
| asemic writing | Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing |
| shakespearean sonnet - sonnet | * Sicilian octave |
| epigram | A very short, witty poem. |
| poulter's measure | A meter consisting of alternate Alexandrines and fourteeners, i.e., twelve-syllable and fourteen-syllable lines, a common measure in Elizabethan times. |
| enjambment | Occurs when the idea in one line carries over into the next line with no pause or terminal punctuation at the end of the line; occurs when there is an inappropriate, unnatural or awkward line-break. |
| trimeter | Three feet; sometimes termed tripody, a triple foot, one measure made up of three feet |
| rhetorical question | A question that does not require an answer. |
| internal focaliser | see focalisation. |
| nonsense verse | Lines that read like word-salad, where individually the terms may be recognizable but in their order and grammatical relations make no sense, or where common words accompany neologisms in expressions intended to mystify and amuse |
| literacy | The ability to read, write, speak, and understand words. |
| ballad | A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain |
| anagram | A word spelled out by rearranging the letters of another word |
| mythologies | Large systems of belief and tradition on which cultures draw to explain and understand themselves |
| refrain | A phrase or line, generally important to the central topic, that is repeated word for word, usually at regular intervals throughout a poem. |
| eponymous author | The eponymous author of a literary work, often a work that is meant to be prophetic or homiletic, is not really the author |
| deliver | To speak a line. |
| verset | Derived from the short verses of the Bible; generally refers to short lines. |
| resonance | The quality of richness or variety of sounds in poetic texture, as in Milton's: |
| dream vision | A (traditionally medieval) poet's relation of how he fell asleep and had an often allegorical dream |
| vers | Not to be confused with verse, below, a vers is a song in Old Provencal almost indistinguishable from the chanson, but vers is the older term. |
| plosive | A consonant sound associated with a burst or release of air (such as /b/ or /t/) |
| pantoum | A French verse form of four quatrains that repeats entire lines in a strict pattern, 1234, 2546, 5768, 7183 |
| syntax | word order; the way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. |
| act | 1 |
| ambiguity | The ability to mean more than one thing. |
| chromaticity | Refers to the dominant or complementary wavelength and purity aspects of the color taken together, or of the aspects specified by the chromaticity coordinates of the color taken together. |
| trimeter | three feet in a line |
| fairy tale | see tale |
| keeper | A good take. |
| octosyllabic | Having eight syllables. |
| church summoner | Medieval law courts were divided into civil courts that tried public offenses and ecclesiastical courts that tried offenses against the church |
| epic | A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure |
| p.o.v. | Point of view |
| author time | see time |
| end-stopped | When a line ends in a full pause, usually indicated by a mark of punctuation. |
| sublime | The main characteristic of great poetry, Longinus held, was sublimity or high, grand, ennobling seriousness. |
| editor | Person who assembles the visual and audio elements of a film into a completed film. |
| adverbial phrase | A phrase that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb |
| aria | Operatic term denoting a solo number that suspends the dramatic action |
| exegesis | An analysis or explanation, particularly of a portion of the Bible. |
| pun | A joke that comes from a play on words |
| tragedy | A serious literary work in which a change in fortune leads to the downfall or death of the protagonist. |
| antanaclasis | A figure of speech in which the same word is repeated in a different sense within a clause or line, e.g., "while we live, let us live." |
| thesis | The main position of an argument |
| echo | Reverberanting sound |
| synapheia | A Greek term meaning to fasten together |
| ambience | Broadly an alternative word for atmosphere |
| adjectival phrase | A phrase that modifies a noun or a pronoun |
| eponymous | having a name used in the title of a literary work |
| part | An acting role. |
| bit part | A small role. |
| three estates | See feudalism |
| ellesmere manuscript | Usually referred to as "the Ellesmere," this book is one of the most important surviving fifteenth-century manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales |
| booth | n |
| language interpretation | Language interpretation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages |
| abstract | An abstract style (in writing) is typically complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, and seldom uses examples to support its points. |
| stanza | Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem |
| subordinate clause | A clause that does not present a complete thought and cannot stand alone as a sentence |
| voice | Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless (unvoiced) or voiced |
| sound check | To test sound levels and equipment before performance. |
| mind style | the way in which one expects the character to use language in his/her own mind |
| approximate rhyme | the sounds are almost but not exactly alike |
| jargon | Language used in a certain profession or by a particular group of people |
| semiotic literary criticism | Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics |
| purgatory | A belief in a place where the souls of those dying in a state of sin may remain while being purged of sin |
| dolly tracks | A set of tracks upon which a dolly-mounted camera is moved. |
| lyrics | The words of a song. |
| archaism | The intentional use of a word or expression no longer in general use, for example, thou mayst is an archaism meaning you may |
| isocolon | See discussion under parallelism. |
| epithalamion | Lyric poem in praise of Hymen (the Greek god of marriage) or of a particular wedding, such as Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamion." |
| documentary | A non-fiction narrative which records an event, person, or place. |
| image | The actual design of a pattern |
| naga-uta | Japanese form of indeterminate length that alternates lines of five and seven syllables and ends with an additional seven-syllable line. |
| personality | A celebrity. |
| ellipsis | a word or phrase in a sentence is omitted though implied by the context |
| quadruplet | A four-syllable foot. |
| pyrrhic | two successive unstressed or lightly stressed syllables. |
| poetic license | The freedom to depart from correctness and grammaticality sometimes extended to poets by generous readers who believed that the poets knew better but needed such effects to be true to their subject. |
| sentence | A grammatical unit consisting of a subject and verb |
| rubric | An authentic (close to real world) assessment tool for making scoring decisions; a printed set of guidelines that distinguishes performances or products of different quality |
| simile | A comparison of two unlike things in which a word of comparison (often like |
| epithet | A descriptive adjective or phrase used to characterize someone or something. |
| perspective | A position from which something is considered or evaluated; standpoint. |
| voice | Indicates whether the subject is acting or being acted upon |
| coda | A concluding section which rounds off a piece of literature, see epilogue. |
| field angle | The angle a which the beam edges are 10% of the centre beam candlepower. |
| acronymy | The act of using or creating acronyms. |
| avenue staging | the staging of a performance with the audience placed on two sides, as though the performance space is a street |
| cretic | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, short, and long syllables |
| blacks | Black clothing worn by technical personnel during productions. |
| perfect rhyme | Occurs when both the consonant and the vowel sound in two words sound identical, even if the words are spelled differently, as in “to” and “two,” and “fight” and “sight.” |
| hemispherical reflectance | the ratio of all of the flux leaving a surface or medium by reflection to the incident flux |
| initial letter | Another term for an initial |
| omniscient point of view | see point of view |
| figura etymologica | see polyptoton |
| hyperbole | the trope of exaggeration or overstatement |
| lament | A poem or song for expressing grief |
| argumentation | A speech or writing intended to convince by establishing truth |
| regional commercial | A TV commercial broadcast within one region or market in the US. |
| idyll | An idyll is either a short poem depicting a tranquil country scene, or a long poem telling a story about heroic deeds or extraordinary events of myth and legend. |
| arsis | The accented part of a poetic foot; the point where an ictus is put. |
| end-rhyme | rhyme at the end of a line. |
| historical novel | a sub-genre of the novel which takes its setting and some of the (main) characters and events from history. |
| outline | A plan for--or a summary of--a writing project or speech. |
| numbers | The songs and dances in a musical play |
| anapest | A metrical foot of three syllables, two short (or unstressed) followed by on long (or stressed). |
| mass noun | A noun that names things that cannot be counted |
| flicker index | a measure of the cyclic variation in output of a light source, taking into account the waveform of the light output |
| didactic verse | Poems that exist so as to teach the readers something, often a moral. |
| climax | Rhetorically, a series of words, phrases, or sentences arranged in a continuously ascending order of intensity |
| malaphor | An informal term for a blend of two aphorisms, idioms, or clichés. |
| nominalization | A type of word formation in which a verb or an adjective (or other part of speech) is used as a noun. |
| lay | A lay is a long narrative poem. |
| syllabic metre | a metrical pattern in which each line has a prescribed number of syllables but the number of stresses varies. |
| consonance | Sometimes just a resemblance in sound between two words, or an initial or head rhyme like alliteration, but also refined to mean shared consonants, whether in sequence ("bud" and "bad") or reversed ("bud" and "dab"). |
| fourteener | An iambic line of fourteen syllables, or seven feet, widely used in English poetry in the middle of the 16th century. |
| naturalism | A movement that developed around the idea that art should represent nature and the world exactly and without moral judgment |
| aube | A dawn-song or aubade, but specifically one sung by a friend watching over a pair of lovers until dawn to prevent any interruption to their love-making or to cover up the noise of the love-making |
| chorus | a group of people situated on stage and commenting throughout the play on events and the characters’ actions. |
| natural language | A human language, such as English or Standard Mandarin, as opposed to artificial language, machine language, or the language of formal logic. |
| lamps | units which may be used in lieu of headlamps or in connection with the lower beam headlights to provide road illumination under conditions of rain, snow, dust or fog. |
| point of view | The vantage point from which a story is told |
| romanticism | The principles and ideals of the Romantic movement in literature and the arts during the late 18th and early 19th centuries favoring felling over reason and placing great emphasis on the subjectice, or personal, ecperience of the individual. |
| comic opera | An outgrowth of the eighteenth-century ballad operas, in which new or original music is composed specially for the lyrics |
| figurative language | Language that communicates ideas beyond the ordinary or literal meaning of the words |
| jongleur | A public entertainer in the Middle Ages who recited or sang chansons de geste, fabliaux, and other poems, sometimes of their own composition, but more often those written by the trouveres. |
| plot hole | a particular item of the plot of a narrative which fails to uphold a reader’s suspension of disbelief |
| analog or analogue | adj., Non-digital audio recording and playback technologies |
| cognates | Words having a common linguistic origin |
| accent | A stressed syllable |
| muphry's law | Muphry's Law is the principle that any criticism of the speech or writing of others will itself contain at least one error of usage or spelling. |
| lumen | A measure of light intensity produced by a light source |
| trochee | A metrical foot consisting of a heavy stress followed by a light stress. |
| speech | Whilst this term refers to the ability to speak, it also means to address a group or to give a talk. |
| dressing the house | Distribution of complimentary tickets to people who will attend the performance |
| rhetorical question | The poet asks a question without expecting to learn anything from the response, or to pose any difficulty for the reader, the answer being something that the poet already implies and the reader infers. |
| little theatre | Non-professional, community theatre. |
| envoy | Diplomatic rank is the system of professional and social rank used in the world of diplomacy and international relations |
| phonemic alphabet | The twelve vowel sounds and twenty-two consonant sounds that make up spoken English, normally encoded between virgules / /. |
| cloth | Canvas scenery suspended from above |
| particular setting | see setting |
| spenserian stanza | A stanza devised by Spenser for The Faerie Queene, founded on the Italian ottava rima |
| episode | a distinct action or series of actions within a plot. |
| haiku | a poetic form, Japanese in origin, that consists of seventeen syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. |
| canon | Someone's list of authors or works considered to be "classic," that is, central to the identity of a given literary tradition or culture. |
| groundlings | While the upper class paid two pennies to sit in the raised area with seats, and some nobles paid three pennies to sit in the Lords' rooms, the majority of viewers who watched Shakespeare's plays were called groundlings or understanders |
| metaphor | A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something important in common. |
| non-narrative nonfiction | Nonfiction written to inform, explain, or persuade that does not use narrative structure to achieve its purpose. |
| tall tale | A distinctively American type of humorous story characterized by exaggeration |
| 8 x 10 | A photo of the performer, commonly 8" x 10" in dimension, usually black and white, showing just the head and shoulders. |
| abecedarian poem | An alphabetic acrostic poem; a poem having verses beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet. |
| periphrasis | a descriptive word or phrase is used instead of a proper name; or, conversely, the use of a proper name as a shorthand to stand for qualities associated with it. |
| cgi | Computer generated graphics and special effects . |
| anachronism | A person, place, or thing that is chronologically out of place, most times belonging to an earlier time period. |
| poet laureate | A poet honored for his artistic achievement or selected as most representative of his country or area; in England, a court official appointed by the sovereign, whose original duties included the composition of odes in honor of the sovereign's birthday and in celebration of State occasions of importance. |
| envelope | A poetic device in which a line, phrase, or stanza is repeated so as to enclose other material, as in Dryden's: |
| acephaly | The omission of a syllable at the beginning of a line of verse |
| heptameter | A line consisting of seven metrical feet |
| denotation | The literal definition of a word, devoid of contextual or emotional issues or connotations. |
| plot time | see time |
| anagogical | In fourfold interpretation, the anagogical reading is the fourth type of interpretation in which one reads a religious writing in an eschatological manner, i.e., the interpreter sees the passage as a revelation concerning the last days, the end of time, or the afterlife. |
| soundtrack | The audio component of a film. |
| monologue | A long, uninterrupted speech (in a narrative or drama) that is spoken in the presence of other characters |
| aesthetic movement | A literary belief that art is its own justification and purpose, advocated in England by Walter Pater and practised by Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, and others. |
| ajust | See discussion under humors. |
| hive | hide or store in hiding |
| blacklisting | Discriminating against someone by refusing them work due to their personal, political, social, or religious beliefs. |
| episodic | see loose plot. |
| moses illusion | In pragmatics and psycholinguistics, the Moses illusion (also known as "semantic illusion") is a phenomenon whereby listeners or readers fail to recognize an inaccuracy or inconsistency in a text. |
| masculine ending or rhyme | See Rhyme. |
| molossus | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, long, and long syllables / ' ' ' /. |
| enjambment | The continuation of a complete idea (a sentence or clause) from one line or couplet of a poem to the next line or couplet without a pause. |
| tale | Tale may refer to: |
| tape the stage | the process of depicting the outlines of the set on the rehearsal room floor, using colored tape; generally done by the stage manager before the first rehearsal |
| novel | an extended piece of prose fiction. |
| anticlimax | The intentional use of elevated language to describe the trivial or commonplace, or a sudden transition from a significant thought to a trivial one in order to achieve a humorous or satiric effect, as in Pope's The Rape of the Lock: |
| rods | Retinal receptors that respond to low levels of luminance but cannot distinguish hues |
| renga | Japanese form comprising half-tanka written by different poets. |
| traveler | 1 |
| hot spot | Area of greatest illumination. |
| georgic poems | characterizing the life of the farmer. |
| dithyramb | An ancient Athenian poetic form sung during the Dionysia (see above) |
| dirge | A poem of grief or lamentation, especially one intended to accompany funeral or memorial rites. |
| blank verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter. |
| archetypal criticism | The analysis of a piece of literature through the examination of archetypes and archetypal patterns in Jungian psychology |
| tricolon | The repetition of a parallel grammatical construction three times for rhetorical effect |
| imagism | A poetic movement signifying important elements such as visual imagery and dry, clear language; advocated free verse as well as new rhythmic effects, colloquial language, and the expression of ideas and emotions with clear, well-defined images. |
| infinitive | A verb form that is usually introduced by to |
| new englishes | Regional and national varieties of the English language used in places where it is not the mother tongue of the majority of the population. |
| discriminated occasion | a specific, discrete moment portrayed in a fictional work, often signaled by phrases such as "At 5:05 in the morning |
| tragedy | A form of Western drama originating in Athens, Greece in the 6th century B.C |
| free verse | There wouldn’t be Poetry and/or the avant-garde |
| fourteener | See Poulter's Measure. |
| signified | the concept which a sound image (signifier) denotes, signified and signifier are inseparable like the two sides of a coin, taken together they are the sign which refers to an object in reality (referent). |
| kelvin | In the metric system, a graduated scale used to measure temperature with 0O (-2730C) being the total absence of heat (absolute zero) |
| pen | Acronym for the association, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists (1921-). |
| special business | specially directed action by an extra player. |
| shakespearean sonnet | See Sonnet. |
| synthesis | The combination of two or more elements into a unified whole |
| experimental novel | Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style. |
| glossolalia | A type of language that cannot be understood, glossolalia is often referred to as "speaking in tongues." |
| literature | Literature (from Latin litterae (plural); letter) is the art of written works |
| numbers | Metrical feet or verse in general. |
| rhythm | a series of alternations of speed and emphasis through linguistic and formal devices tending towards regularity. |
| literal language | A fact or idea stated directly |
| dirge | This is a song for the dead |
| italian sonnet | An octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines); typically rhymed abbaabba cdecde, it has many variations that still reflect the basic division into two parts separated by a rhetorical turn of argument (e.g., see Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese [1850]). |
| refrain | A line or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza. |
| analyzed rhyme | Another term for inexact rhyme |
| phoneme | A linguistic term used to describe a unit in speech which carries meaning. |
| renaissance | literary period 1500-1660. |
| tape | A demo reel. |
| structuralism | Structuralism is an intellectual movement that developed in France in the 1950s and 1960s, in which human culture is analysed semiotically (i.e., as a system of signs). |
| nonet | A group of nine. |
| mnemonic devices | Forms, such as rhyme, built into poems to help reciters remember the poems. |
| number | In language studies, number refers to the grammatical contrast between singular and plural forms of nouns, pronouns, determiners, and verbs. |
| chiasmus | An inverted parallelism; the reversal of the order of corresponding words or phrases (with or without exact repetition) in successive clauses which are usually parallel in syntax, as in Pope's "a fop their passion, but their prize a sot," or Goldsmith's "to stop too fearful, and too faint to go." |
| monosyllable | A word or an utterance of one syllable. |
| strike | To remove scenery, props and lights from the stage. |
| symploce | a combination of anaphora and epistrophe, so that one word or phrase is repeated at the beginning and another word or phrase is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. |
| iambic pentameter | Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama |
| hemistich | See Line. |
| lamp | an arc light source utilizing mercury vapor and metal halide additives for an approximation of daylight (5000-6000-K) illumination |
| septet | A seven-line stanza of varying meter and rhyme scheme, usually reserved for lyric poetry. |
| motif | An image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works and that is sometimes thought to belong to a collective unconsciousness. |
| paraphrase | a restatement of a text in different words, often to clarify meaning |
| internal rhyme | A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end of the same metrical line |
| figurative language | Another term for imagery; when a figure or image in a poem represents something else. |
| elegy | A poem that mourns the death of an individual. |
| minimal attachment principle | In psycholinguistics, the minimal attachment principle is the theory that listeners and readers initially attempt to interpret sentences in terms of the simplest syntactic structure that is consistent with the input. |
| style | the way in which language is used |
| mnemonic | A mnemonic is a device--such as an image, rhyme, or figure of speech--used to assist memory. |
| heptameter | A line of verse consisting of seven metrical feet |
| subtext | 1 |
| tripod | A stand with three legs which is used to support something. |
| broken rhyme | see Rhyme. |
| cover | another term for Understudy |
| acrostic | (Greek, ‘at the tip of the verse’) |
| synesthesia | Figurative expression of the perception of one sense in terms of another |
| text | words of the dialogue and lyrics |
| heroic couplet | see couplet |
| nato phonetic alphabet | A spelling alphabet used by airline pilots, police, the military, and other officials when communicating over radio or telephone. |
| ditty | A simple little poem meant to be sung. |
| syllogism | A syllogism (Greek: συλλογισμός â syllogismos â "conclusion," "inference") or logical appeal is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two others (the premises) of a certain form, i.e |
| symbolic poem | A poem in which the use of symbols is so pervasive and internally consistent that the larger referential world is distanced, if not forgotten |
| arsis | In music and prosody, arsis and thesis refer to the stronger and weaker parts of a musical measure or poetic foot |
| trilogy | A group of three literary works that together compose a larger narrative |
| vers de société | Sophisticated light verse of a kind appealing to "polite society." Poets writing in this vein include Charles Stuart Calverley, Frederick Locker Lampson, and John Betjeman. |
| theme | The statement a poem makes about its subject |
| dimeter | A line containing only two metrical feet |
| synecdoche | A rhetorical figure in which a part is substituted for the whole or a whole for the part. |
| senryu | A short Japanese poem that is similar to a haiku in structure but treats human beings rather than nature, often in a humorous or satiric way. |
| modulation | In poetry, the harmonious use of language relative to the variations of stress and pitch. |
| epigram | An epigram is a very short, witty poem: "Sir, I admit your general rule,/That every poet is a fool,/But you yourself may serve to show it,/That every fool is not a poet" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge). |
| homeric simile | Homeric simile, also called epic simile, is a detailed comparison in the form of a simile that is many lines in length |
| object of a preposition | The object of a preposition is a noun or pronoun that follows a preposition and completes its meaning. |
| literary canon | a set of ‘important’ or ‘major’ literary works agreed by convention to be of a higher quality than other texts. |
| beat | A heavy stress or accent in a line of poetry |
| accommodation | The process by which the eye changes focusfrom one distance to another. |
| diction | choice of words |
| presence | The quality of looking and sounding as if he or she belongs in an performance venue. |
| ontological metaphor | A type of metaphor in which something concrete is projected onto something abstract. |
| reverdie | A medieval song celebrating the coming of spring, such as "Sumer is icumen in" and "Lenten is Come with Loue to Toune," modernized in poems such as the opening of T |
| synonym | A word that has a meaning identical with, or very similar to, another word in the same language |
| old english period | literary period 450-1066. |
| box set | A set (usually of an interior space) composed of a back and two side walls and sometimes a ceiling. |
| iambic | a foot consisting of an unstressed and stressed syllable (U/) |
| beat | Smallest unit of dramatic action which attempts to satisfy an intention. |
| internal audience | An imaginary listener(s) or audience to whom a character speaks in a poem or story |
| discourse | the level of transmission, HOW a story is told |
| lenaia | An Athenian religious festival occurring shortly after the Dionysia |
| vernacular | The domestic or native language of the people of a particular country or geographical area. |
| verso tronco | In Italian prosody, any line ending with an accented syllable (i.e |
| adonic | A verse consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee or trochee |
| strike | 1 |
| rhetoric | The art of speaking or writing effectively; skill in the eloquent use of language. |
| fabliau | A short metrical verse prevalent in the 12th and 13th centuries in the north of France, usually ribald and humorous. |
| revenger type | major character in revenge tragedies who seeks revenge for some injustice done to him or his family (usually the death of a beloved person or a family member). |
| picaresque novel | an early form of the novel, some critics call it a precursor of the novel, originating in Spain, which tells of the escapades of a lighthearted rogue or rascal, usually episodic in structure. |
| pantun | The pantun is a Malay poetic form |
| nominative case | See "subjective case." |
| coming of age | The maturation of a character due to an event that forces him to lose his innocence. |
| visual poetry | See concrete poetry. |
| shoot | To record on film. |
| corpus christi play | A religious play performed outdoors in the medieval period that enacts an event from the Bible, such as the story of Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, the crucifixion, and so on |
| hun | derogatory German nickname |
| hamartia | Hamartia (Ancient Greek: ἁμαρτία) is a term developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics |
| hokku | In Japanese poetry, the term hokku literally means "starting verse." A hokku was the first starting link of a much longer chain of verses known as renga or linked verse |
| nature writing | Nature writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the natural environment serves as the dominant subject. |
| point of view | the perspective from which people, events, and other details in a work of fiction are viewed; also called focus, though the term point of view is sometimes used to include both focus and voice |
| epithet | An adjective or adjectival phrase, usually attached to the name of a person or thing, such as "Richard the Lion-Hearted," Milton's "ivy-crowned Bacchus" in "L'Allegro," or Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn." |
| trimeter | A line of verse consisting of three metrical feet or three dipodies. |
| curtain speech | Introduction given from the stage just before a performance starts. |
| syllabic verse | A type of verse distinguished primarily by the syllable count, i.e., the number of syllables in each line, rather than by the rhythmical arrangement of accents or time quantities. |
| senryu | A form of Japanese verse that is comic, parodic, or satiric in nature. |
| lay in | To overdub. |
| tanka | A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the rest of seven. |
| distal stimuli | any of the points |
| symbol | A word or image that stands for something else in a vivid but indeterminate way: it suggests more than what it actually says |
| scoring guide | List of criteria for evaluating student work |
| parataxis | The placing side by side of phrases or clauses while omitting conjunctions |
| cone | A retinal receptor that dominates the retinal response when the luminance level is high and provides the basis for the perception of color. |
| parody | A poem that imitates another poem closely, but changes details for comic or critical effect |
| pilot | Introductory episode of a TV show that is used by the producers to market more episodes to the networks. |
| mixed metaphor | A mixed metaphor is a succession of incongruous or ludicrous comparisons. |
| true rhyme | Another term for perfect rhyme or exact rhyme |
| oronym | An oronym is a sequence of words (for example, "ice cream") that sounds the same as a different sequence of words ("I scream"). |
| breakdown | A detailed description of roles to be cast for a production. |
| fish-eye | an extreme wide-angle lens. |
| sensory detail | See Imagery, Style |
| signifier | the sound image used to refer to a concept (signified), signified and signifier are inseparable like the two sides of a coin, taken together they are the sign which refers to an object in reality (referent). |
| stream of consciousness | a concept developed in psychology by William James which denotes the idea that one’s thoughts are not orderly and well-formulated but more of a jumbled-up sequence of associations, these are not necessarily verbal but also include other sensual perceptions. |
| abstract stage | one in which the bare minimum of setting is used such as free-standing doors, free-hung windows, limited furnishings; stylistic rather than realistic. |
| elizabethan | Occurring in the time of Queen Elizabeth I's reign, from 1558-1603 |
| refrain | One or more lines repeated before or after the stanzas of a poem. |
| thrust | 1 |
| pun | Usually, the humorous use of a word or phrase to suggest two or more meanings at the same time. |
| verbal irony - irony | Ironic statements (verbal irony) often convey a meaning exactly opposite from their literal meaning |
| meiosis | An understatement; the presentation of a thing with underemphasis in order to achieve a greater effect, such as, "the building of the pyramids took a little bit of effort." |
| slice of life | Slice of life is a theatrical term that refers to a naturalistic representation of real life, sometimes used as an adjective, as in "a play with 'slice of life' dialogue." The term originated in 1890â95 as a translation from the French phrase tranche de vie, credited to the French playwright Jean Jullien (1854â1919). |
| elevation | the angle between the axis of a searchlight drum and the horizontal |
| hypermetric | A verse with one or more syllables than the metre calls for, a line with metrically redundant syllables. |
| lux | A metric unit of measurement for illumination |
| telestich | Spelling out a word, a phrase, or name vertically in sequence down the last letters of verse lines in a poem |
| meter | A unit of line measurement that combines a fixed or varying number of syllables per line with the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. |
| marginalia | Drawings, notation, illumination, and doodles appearing in the margins of a medieval text, rather than the central text itself. |
| thegn | A warrior who has sworn his loyalty to a lord in Anglo-Saxon society |
| margin | The part of a page outside the main body of text. |
| althing | The closest approximation the Icelandic Vikings had to a government/court system/police--a gathering of representatives from the local things to decide on policy, hear complaints, settle disputes, and proclaim incorrigible individuals as outlaws (see below) |
| foot | A single unit within the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that are repeated within a single line. |
| falling action | (or resolution) is characterized by diminishing tensions and the resolution of the plot's conflicts and complications |
| acephalous | From Greek "headless," acephalous lines are lines in normal iambic pentameter that contain only nine syllables rather than the expected ten |
| escape literature | formula literature follows a pattern of conventional reader expectations |
| occultatio | The rhetorical strategy of calling attention to something by passing over it quickly and refusing to elaborate on its significance. |
| oneiromancy | The belief that dreams could predict the future, or the act of predicting the future by analyzing dreams |
| phonetic transcription | A method by which sounds are recorded or written down in order to represent their distinctiveness. |
| ham | A performer who exaggerates movement or voice. |
| lost generation | The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation that came of age during World War I |
| greenscreen | A technique similar to bluescreen in which a scene is shot against a large green backdrop |
| ubi sunt | Ubi sunt (literally "where are...") is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?" |
| blues | Oral black American folk or popular melancholic songs of the early twentieth century. |
| dasn't | dared not, as in dared not try it |
| move out | To cross away from the center of the stage. |
| z-cards | Composite. |
| signal | Bells or lights or other means of warning the orchestra or stage staff in flies, etc |
| renku | A renku is, by strict definition, a smaller, more rigidly-structured subset of renga, with three-line haikus (five syllables / seven syllables / seven syllables) alternating with two-line stnzas of seven syllables each. |
| enclosed and gasketed | See vapor-tight. |
| hexameter | A line of poetry that has six metrical feet. |
| juggernaut | Juggernaut is a term used in the English language to describe a literal or metaphorical force regarded as unstoppable. |
| curtain time | Advertised start time of a performance. |
| syntax | The formal arrangement of words in a sentence. |
| industrial program | a production designed to promote directly or indirectly the image of an organization, its products or services or education in the use of its products or services |
| erythemal threshold | See minimal perceptible erythema. |
| burden | The choric line or lines that signal the end or the beginning of a stanza in a carol or hymn. |
| innuendo | An innuendo is a baseless invention of thoughts or ideas |
| subplot | Secondary action that is interwoven with the main action in a play or story |
| goniophotometer | a photometer for measuring the directional light distribution characteristics of sources, luminaires, media and surfaces. |
| abecedarius | An abecedarius is an acrostic in which the first letter of every word, strophe or verse follows the order of the alphabet |
| epilogue | A conclusion added to a literary work such as a novel, play, or long poem |
| pilgrimage | An act of spiritual devotion or penance in which an individual travels without material comforts to a distant holy place |
| pronounced | It’s tone and accent are gone |
| waivers | Union permission allowing deviation from standard contract terms. |
| anapestic | a foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (UU/) |
| syncope | Omission of a syllable or sound from the middle of a word. |
| play-within-the-play | a play is staged within a play as part of its story, typical feature of revenge drama |
| imagery | Strong, descriptive language evoking sensory impressions on the reader; a word or group of words referring to any sensory experience. |
| liturgical drama | Liturgical drama or religious drama, in its various Christian contexts, originates from the mass itself, and usually presents a relatively complex ritual that includes theatrical elements. |
| pit | 1 |
| synonym | use of words with the same or similar meanings. |
| laureate | In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary or military glory |
| multiple plots | several plot lines in one narrative or play. |
| aka | Also known as |
| model | To use light and shadow to entrance three-dimensionality. |
| ultraviolet radiation | Any radiant energy within the wavelength range of 0.001 to 0.38 microns. |
| monomorphemic word | A monomorphemic word is a word that contains just one morpheme. |
| topic | The meaning a literary work refers to, stated in a phrase or word |
| confessional poetry | Vividly sensational self-revelatory verse, a literary movement led by American poets from Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman. |
| spondee | A poetic beat consisting of two long syllables. |
| carpe diem | A Latin expression that means "seize the day". |
| prolepsis | see flashforward |
| attitude | An expressed position, feeling, or manner with regard to a person, idea, or thing. |
| aubade | A lyric about the dawn (e.g., see John Donne, "The Sun Rising" [1633]). |
| decorated initial | In medieval manuscripts, this term refers to an introductory letter of a text division, embellished with some type of abstract design, i.e., a design not necessarily containing a picture (which would make it an inhabited initial) and not necessarily containing a scene from the story (which would make it an historiated initial) |
| comedy | a work intended to interest, involve, and amuse the reader or audience, in which no terrible disaster occurs and that ends happily for the main characters |
| episteme | Episteme, as distinguished from techne, is etymologically derived from the Greek word ἐπιστήμη for knowledge or science, which comes from the verb ἐπίσταμαι, "to know". |
| accentual verse | Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line or stanza regardless of the number of syllables that are present |
| accent | The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word |
| motto | (1) A word, phrase, or sentence that expresses an attitude, ideal, or guiding principle associated with the organization to which it belongs |
| autobiography | see biography. |
| epic simile | Extended comparison or cluster of similes or metaphors. |
| bad quarto | In the jargon of Shakespearean scholars, a "bad quarto" is a copy of the play that a disloyal actor would recreate from memory and then submit for publication in a rival publishing house without the consent of the author |
| narration | The kind of writing or speaking that tells a story. |
| rhythm | the modulation of weak and strong (or stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech |
| opera-bouffe | An opera of a burlesque character |
| haiku | A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables |
| glow discharge | an electric discharge characterized by a low, approximately constant current density at the cathode (on the order of 10 jiA/mm2) at low cathode temperature, and a high voltage drop (typically 50 V or more) |
| hyperbole | Exaggeration beyond reasonable credence |
| jumper | An electric cable and connector assembly. |
| easter uprising | On Easter Monday in 1916, about 1,200 Irish revolutionaries armed with only rifles engaged in an aborted rebellion against English domination of their country |
| hook | A memorable phrase or melody which is repeated in a song. |
| cliché | Language or ideas that have become trite or commonplace through overuse; stereotypical, boring, unoriginal language. |
| operetta | A short light opera |
| sight rhyme | Words which are similar in spelling but different in pronunciation, like mow and how or height and weight |
| enclosing method | Another term for framing method. |
| ambiguity | Occurs when there exists a double meaning that is either implied or explicit. |
| beat poets | A San Francisco-based group of counter-culture poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Kenneth Rexroth. |
| internal rhyme | occurs when the rhyming appear in the same line |
| satire | A kind of writing that holds up to ridicule or contempt the weaknesses and wrongdoing of individuals, groups, institution, or humanity in general. |
| temporal setting | see setting |
| ode | A poem of high seriousness with irregular stanzaic forms. |
| subgenre | see genre |
| synaesthesia | the description of one kind of sensual perception in terms of another. |
| gender studies | an approach in literary analysis which scrutinises gender roles and gendered perspectives in literary text. |
| ambiguity | When words, sentences and texts have more than one meaning |
| redaction | In the study of literature, redaction is a form of editing in which multiple source texts are combined (redacted) and subjected to minor alteration to make them into a single work |
| gamebook | A gamebook (also sometimes referred to as choose your own adventure books or CYOA books, not to be confused with the series by that title) is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices that affect the course of the narrative, which branches down various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages |
| distribution temperature | (of a light source) the absolute temperature of a blackbody whose relative spectral distribution is most nearly the same in the visible region of the spectrum as that of the light source. |
| coming-of-age story | see initation story |
| setting | The time and place of the action in a poem.. |
| apology | Apologetics (from Greek αÏολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (usually religious) through the systematic use of reason |
| remote | TV or radio session held outside of the studio. |
| pleonasm | Unnecessary verbiage, redundancy as in "It was a dark and lightless night." |
| equipment operating factor | the flux of a high-intensity discharge (HID) lamp-ballast-luminaire combination in a given operating position as a fraction of the flux of the lamp-luminaire combination (1) operated in the position for rating lamp lumens and (2) using the reference ballasting specified for rating lamp lumens |
| oration | An oration is a speech delivered in a formal and dignified manner. |
| concrete diction | words that emphasize things immediately perceivable by the senses |
| hypotaxis | clauses and sentences are arranged with subordination, usually longer sentence constructions (opposite of |
| invocation of the muse | A prayer or address made to the one of the nine muses of Greco-Roman mythology, in which the poet asks for the inspiration, skill, knowledge, or appropriate mood to create a poem worthy of his subject-matter |
| narrator comment | see comment. |
| spondaic | a foot with two long or equally accented syllables together (//) |
| prose | Any material that is not written in a regular meter like poetry |
| iambic pentameter | See discussion under meter. |
| canto | A canto is one of the main or larger divisions of a long poem. |
| ground light | visible radiation from the sun and sky reflected by surfaces below the plane of the horizon. |
| fenestration | any opening or arrangement of openings (normally filled with media for control) for the admission of daylight. |
| double exposure | two distinct images appearing simultaneously with one superimposed upon the other. |
| luc-bat | (Vietnamese, ‘six-eight’) |
| complaint | A lament or satiric attack on social evils, such as Chaucer's "Complaint to his Purse," the opening of the Wakefield Master's "Second Shepherd's Play," or Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint." Not to be confused with a poet's grumbling about weather or writing, such as Ezra Pound's "Ancient Music" or Chaucer's "The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne." |
| sling | A strong flexible, webbed belt or steel cable in the shape of a loop. |
| humorism | Humorism, or humoralism, is a discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers |
| prolepsis | Anticipation. |
| flashforward | Breaking normal chronology by shifting to a future time. |
| acronym | A word formed from the initial letters in a phrase |
| echoism | see Onomatopoeia. |
| implied author | see author |
| social novel | also industrial novel or Condition of England novel, associated with the development of nineteenth-century realism gives a portrait of society, especially of lower parts of society, dealing with and criticising the living conditions created by industrial development or by a particular legal situation |
| symbolist movement | Late 19th-century French writers, including Mallarmé and Valéry, whose verse dealt with transcendental phenomena or with images and actions whose meaning was associative rather than referential. |
| rhetorical device | In rhetoric, a rhetorical device or resource of language is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective |
| memory | One of the traditional five parts or canons of rhetoric, that which considers methods and devices to aid and improve the memory. |
| eponym | A word which has its origins in a person's name. |
| consonance | The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words. |
| syntax | The way in which words are put together to form constructions, such as phrases or sentences. |
| romance | Long narrative poems in French about courtly culture and secret love that triumphed in English with poems such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer's The Knight's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde. |
| avant-garde | Avant-garde (French pronunciation: [avɑ̃ɡaʁd]) means "advance guard" or "vanguard" |
| pound's ideogrammic method | The Ideogrammic Method was a technique expounded by Ezra Pound which allowed poetry to deal with abstract content through concrete images |
| final preview | Final performance before a production opens. |
| drama | A production that takes a thoughtful, serious attitude toward its subject matter. |
| dying rhyme | Another term for feminine metrical endings |
| cacophony | Discordant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables which are grating to the ear, usually inadvertent, but sometimes deliberately used in poetry for effect. |
| unit set | A set that can represent several different settings by making only slight changes to scenic elements. |
| magic realism | a type of fiction that involves the creation of a fictional world in which the kind of familiar, plausible action and characters one might find in more straightforwardly realist fiction coexist with utterly fantastic ones straight out of myths or dreams |
| neurolinguistics | Neurolinguistics is the interdisciplinary study of language processing in the brain. |
| objectivist poetry | Poems are treated as objects that can be analyzed in terms of mechanical features |
| catachresis | a mixed metaphor. |
| discourse | Formal, extended expression of thought on a subject, either spoken or written. |
| autodiegetic narration | part of the terminology introduced by the critic Gérard Genette to denote a narration where the narrator tells his or her own story. |
| verso piano | In Italian prosody, any line that has the dominant accent on the penultimate syllable, making the line ending paroxytonic. |
| occupatio | A figure of rhetoric where a writer explains that he or she will not have time or space to say something but then goes on to say that thing anyway, possibly at length. |
| six-to-tens | Children between the ages of six and 10 years old. |
| cadence | The progressive rhythmical pattern in lines of verse; also, the natural tone or modulation of the voice determined by the alternation of accented or unaccented syllables. |
| isolux line | A line plotted on any appropriate set of coordinates to show all the points on a surface where the daylight illuminance is the same |
| crawl | Screen credits or written text that slowly move into the screen from one side and off the other side of the screen. |
| haikai renga | Another term for renku |
| name-calling | A fallacy that uses emotionally loaded terms to influence an audience. |
| analogy | An agreement or similarity in some particulars between things otherwise different; sleep and death, for example, are analogous in that they both share a lack of animation and a recumbent posture. |
| maqama | Picaresque Arabic stories in rhymed prose |
| phrase | A group of related words that lacks either a subject or a predicate or both |
| voice | A vehicle through which private vision is translated to the world. |
| medieval romance | See discussion under romance, medieval. |
| whimsical | A critical term for writing what is fanciful or expresses odd notions. |
| simile | A direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another that usually draws the connection with the words "like" or "as." Compare metaphor. |
| juxtaposition - contrast | In semantics, contrast is a relationship between two discourse segments |
| retouch | To make corrections to imperfections on a photograph. |
| trope | The intentional use of a word or expression figuratively, i.e., used in a different sense from its original significance in order to give vividness or emphasis to an idea |
| sprung rhythm | A poetic rhythm characterized by feet varying from one to four syllables which are equal in time length but different in the number of syllables |
| allegory | A story in which people, things, and actions represent an idea or generalization about life; allegories often have a strong moral or lesson |
| chorus | A group of performers that make up the community of characters within a play, having few lines individually, and seen on stage as one entity. |
| sm | Stage manager. |
| proof | A sample photograph for testing photo quality. |
| song | A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains), written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with accompaniment of musical instruments |
| far ultraviolet | the region of the electromagnetic spectrum extending from 100 to 200 nm. |
| objectivity and subjectivity | An objective treatment of subject matter is an impersonal or outside view of events |
| universality | Universality may refer to: |
| wit | Wit is a form of intellectual humour, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks |
| associate producer | Performs numerous functions as delegated by a producer |
| meal penalty | A fee imposed upon a producer for failure to provide meals or meal breaks as specified by contract. |
| orchestra | in classical Greek theater, a semicircular area used mostly for dancing by the chorus. |
| high hat | A top hat. |
| hypercatalectic | See Catalectic. |
| wrap | To complete a day's filming. |
| crossed rhyme | In long couplets, especially hexameter lines, sufficient room in the line allows a poet to use rhymes in the middle of the line as well as at the end of each line |
| edition | A printed text, from which future re-printings or reissues are prepared |
| marxist criticism | an approach to literature under Marxist premises. |
| act | a major division in the action of a play |
| wings | Backstage areas left and right of the acting area. |
| anapest | A fairly uncommon metrical foot where two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable. |
| dactylic | referring to the metrical pattern in which each foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones—for example, "Fláshed all their / sábres bare" (Tennyson, "Charge of the Light Brigade") |
| virgule - slash | The slash is a sign, "/", used as a punctuation mark and for various other purposes |
| speed-up | see summary |
| echo verse | A form of poem in which a word or two at the end of a line appears as an echo constituting the entire following line |
| parataxis | clauses or sentences are arranged in a series without subordination, usually shorter sentence constructions (opposite of |
| rhopalic verse | (Greek, ‘like a club’) |
| product placement | Diplaying specific products in a film or TV production usually in exchange for money. |
| exposition | a narrative device, often used at the beginning of a work, that provides necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances |
| envoy | a three-line concluding stanza |
| back-end deal | Contract agreement for payment to be made after a project is produced, released, and begins making a profit. |
| dactylic | a foot consisting of stressed-unstressed-unstressed syllables (/UU) |
| rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. |
| abecedarian | See discussion under acrostic, below. |
| masculine rhyme | Stresses the final syllables in words. |
| type | A character stereotype. |
| contact sheet | A print sheet made up of all the shots from a roll of film. |
| coherence | The logical relationship of each element of the work. |
| ottava rima | a stanza of eight lines of heroic verse with the rhyme scheme abababcc |
| verism | Verism is the artistic preference of contemporary everyday subject matter instead of the heroic or legendary in art and literature; a form of realism |
| trochee | A metrical foot of two syllables, one long (or stressed) and one short (or unstressed) |
| bar | See Batten |
| apron stage | A stage that projects out into the auditorium area |
| viewpoint - narrative mode | The narrative mode (also known as the mode of narration) is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. |
| ottava rima | A stanza of eight lines composed in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abababcc (the cc is a closed couplet). |
| elegy | An elergy is a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead. |
| grammar | The study of the structure and features of a language |
| anachronism | Someone or something belonging to another time period than the one in which it is described as being. |
| improvisation | To perform without preparation. |
| description | a narrative mode that represents things that can be seen, heard or felt in some way |
| negative-positive restatement | Negative-positive restatement is a method of achieving emphasis by stating an idea twice, first in negative terms and then in positive terms. |
| onomatopoeia | Onomatopoeia is the formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. |
| accentual rhythm | See discussion under sprung rhythm. |
| pattern poetry | Verse that creates the shape of its subject typographically on the page (and thus also called "shape poetry") |
| lighting batten | A metal structure wired for electric lamps running from P.S |
| prop table | Backstage table upon which props are placed before use. |
| ballade | A type of poem, usually with three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines and a shorter final stanza (or envory) of four or five lines. |
| assembly | Part of the editing process in which outtakes are removed from the masters and the remaining takes are placed in broadcast order. |
| melic verse | An ornate form of Greek poetry of the 7th and 6th centuries BC which was written to be sung, either by a single voice or a chorus, to the accompaniment of musical instruments. |
| glyconic | A Greek and Roman metre that consists of a spondee, a choriamb, and an iamb / ' ' / ' ~ ~ ' / ~ ' / . |
| singlet | A one-syllable foot. |
| apotropaic | Designed to ward off evil influence or malevolent spirits by frightening these forces away |
| underground press | The phrase underground press is most often used to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations |
| aesthetics | The appreciation and analysis of beauty |
| idiom | A phrase or expression that means something different from what the words actually say |
| orator | A skilled public speaker. |
| denotation | What a word points to, names, or refers to, either in the world of things or in the mind. |
| nigerian english | The varieties of the English language that are used in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. |
| epistrophe | a word or expression is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or lines. |
| literary devices | Techniques used in any work to create an effect, such as metaphors and alliteration |
| carol | A hymn or poem often sung, as at Christmas, by a group, with an individual taking the changing stanzas and the group taking the burden or refrain |
| variorum | A variorum is a work that collates all known variants of a text |
| scout | One who seeks out and recruits new talent. |
| scrivener | Another term for a scribe |
| pick up | To start a scene from a place other than the beginning, usually due to a problem with the original shot. |
| dirge | A brief funeral hymn or song |
| content | Something that is to be expressed through poetic verse; the subjects and topics written about. |
| impressionism | An early twentieth century movement embracing the use of images and symbols |
| maxim | A maxim is a compact expression of a general truth or rule of conduct. |
| universal symbol | Another term for an archetype. |
| employer of record | Company responsible for employment and for taxes and unemployment benefits. |
| tenor | The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register |
| anapests | Metrical movements within a poem that consist of two stressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. |
| sonnet | A lyric poem that is 14 lines long |
| imagination | See discussion under fancy. |
| paper the house | To give away tickets to a performance to fill seats for a particular performance. |
| asyndeton | the omission of conjunctions to coordinate phrases, clauses, or words where normally conjunctions would be used (opposite of polysyndeton) |
| ordinal number | A number that indicates position or order in relation to other numbers: first, second, third, and so on. |
| free meter | Not to be confused with free verse, free meter refers to a type of Welsh poetry in which the meters do not correspond to the "strict meters" established in the 1400s |
| safety cable | A steel cable that has a clip on one end and a loop on the other |
| articulation | the clear, distinct and accurate formation and execution of speech sounds. |
| heptameter | A line of poetry that has seven metrical feet. |
| beam angle | The central portion of the cone of light, in which the intensity does not fall below 50% of maximum. |
| grue | Slangy nickname for "gruesome" verse |
| evidence | Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion |
| aside | A dramatic device in which a character speaks his or her thoughts aloud, in words meant to be heard by the audience but not by the other characters |
| phonemic awareness/phonological awareness | Awareness that spoken language consists of a sequence of phonemes |
| surrealism | A dream state in which reality and the unreal co-exist without contradicting one another; the suggestion of a dream in which the irrational is expressed through a synthesis of opposite meanings |
| interior monologue | When a character’s thoughts and mental associations are used to indirectly convey action and external events; the character’s thoughts are usually not spoken aloud. |
| accent | the emphasis, or stress, given a syllable in pronunciation |
| main character | See Protagonist |
| suspense | That quality of a literary work that makes the reader or audience uncertain or tense about the outcome of events |
| comitatus | (Latin: "companionship" or "band"): The term describes the tribal structure of the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic tribes in which groups of men would swear fealty to a hlaford (lord) in exchange for food, mead, and heriot, the loan of fine armor and weaponry |
| comps | Complimentary tickets. |
| narrator time | see time |
| style | The author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to achieve certain effects |
| critique | A detailed analysis of a work. |
| tome | A volume forming part of a larger work |
| blue screen | Shooting against a large blue or green (green screen) backdrop |
| colloquial language | Informal writing of literate people; ordinary conversation as opposed to formal writing. |
| romanticism | The late 18th-century, early 19th-century period of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron. |
| transition | In a piece of writing, the passing from one subject or division of a composition to another |
| character | A created person in a play or a narrative whose particular qualities are revealed by the action, description and conversation |
| stresses and pauses | the prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables; usually stands out because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different pitch or are louder than other syllables |
| common measure | A meter consisting chiefly of seven iambic feet arranged in rhymed pairs, thus a line with four accents followed by a line with three accents, usually in a 4-line stanza |
| epithalamium | An epithalamium is a poem in honour of a bride and bridegroom. |
| sentence | A group of words expressing one or more complete thoughts. |
| metaplasm | Metaplasm is a rhetorical term for any alteration in the form of a word, in particular the addition, subtraction, or substitution of letters or sounds. |
| hair side | The side of a sheet or parchment or vellum that once carried the animal's hair |
| volta | Also called a turn, a volta is a sudden change in thought, direction, or emotion near the conclusion of a sonnet |
| fabliau | A bawdy medieval verse narrative, originally French but adapted by Geoffrey Chaucer's in "The Miller's Tale," "The Reeve's Tale," "The Merchant's Tale," and others of The Canterbury Tales. |
| delirium tremens | nervous and mental disorder caused by alcoholism |
| hebraism | Hebraism is the identification of a usage, trait, or characteristic of the Hebrew language |
| air check | Recording a program during broadcast for archival or legal purposes. |
| heavy | role of a villain. |
| trope | A figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, in whch words are not used in their literal (or actual) sense but in a figurative (or imaginative) sense. |
| type scene | A type scene is a literary convention employed by a narrator across a set of scenes, or related to scenes (place, action) already familiar to the audience |
| alcaics | a four-line stanza of considerable metrical complexity, named after the ancient Greek poet Alcaeus. |
| pun | A word play suggesting, with humorous intent, the different meanings of one word or the use of two or more words similar in sound but different in meaning, as in Mark A |
| limes | Followspots and their operators. |
| dramatic monologue | a type of poem consisting of the speech of a single character which, often unintentionally, reveals the speaker’s character or thoughts. |
| anaphora | The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences. |
| non sequitur | A non sequitur is a fallacy in which a conclusion does not follow logically from what preceded it. |
| diffuser | a device to redirect or scatter the light from a source |
| carpe diem | A Latin expression that means “seize the day.” Carpe diem poems urge the reader (or the person to whom they are addressed) to live for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment |
| run-on line | See discussion under enjambement |
| acatalectic | An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot |
| action | any event or series of events depicted in a literary work; an event may be verbal as well as physical, so that saying something or telling a story within the story may be an event |
| virelai | A form of medieval French verse used in poetry and music |
| verso sdrucciolo | In Italian prosody, any line that ends with a word where the dominant accent is on the antepenultimate syllable, making the line ending proparoxytonic. |
| isochronous metre | All stressed syllables are separated in isochronous metre by equal duration of time no matter how many slacks or unstressed syllables occur between them. |
| adonic | A Classical Greek and Latin metre, a dimeter with a dactyl and a spondee / ~ ' ' / ' ' / such as are found at the close of sapphics. |
| pointing | Giving special emphasis to something. |
| "single effect" theory | Edgar Allan Poe's theory about what constituted a good short story |
| satire | A literary technique in which ideas, customs, behaviors, or institutions are ridiculed for the purpose of improving society |
| hovering stress | A metrical accent that may apply to either of two sequential syllables, but not to both, and so seems to "hover" over them equally. |
| meter | A recognizable though varying pattern of stressed syllables alternating with syllables of less stress |
| psychological realism | see realism |
| mental lexicon | In psycholinguistics, a person's internalized knowledge of the properties of words. |
| synesthesia | A marvel that occurs when something is sensed, felt, perceived, or described in terms of something else. |
| external conflict | see conflict |
| trochaic | a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one (/U) |
| declension | A grammatical term referring to the inflection of certain words for number and case. |
| tone | The means of creating a relationship o |
| poststructuralism | approaches to literary criticism influenced by poststructuralist philosophy, one of its chief tenets is the denial of the existence of universal principles which create meaning and coherence |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words that imitate sounds; writers can deliberately choose words that contribute to the desired effect ex |
| physical asset | A positive physical characteristic. |
| revise | To change a piece of writing in order to improve it in style or content |
| emergency | any condition, external or internal to the premises, that would compromise the effectiveness of the |
| negative capability | John Keats, in a letter of October 27, 1818, suggested that a poet, possessing the power to eliminate his own personality, can take on the qualities of something else and write most effectively about it. |
| fame/shame culture | A culture which embraces the notion of 'death before dishonour', glorifying warriors. |
| iambic pentameter | Iambic pentameter is the most common type of meter in English poetry, in which there are five iambs to a line |
| alcaics | A four-line Classical stanza named after Alcaeus, a Greek poet, with a predominantly dactylic metre, imitated by Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Milton." |
| petrarchan sonnet | Please see Sonnet for definition. |
| zeitgeist | The characteristic thought, preoccupation or spirit of a particular period. |
| phronesis | PhronÄsis (Greek: φρόνησις) in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the virtue of practical thought, usually translated "practical wisdom", sometimes as "prudence". |
| bowdlerize | Thomas Bowdler (pronounced /ˈbaʊdlər/) (11 July 1754 â 24 February 1825) was an English physician who published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work, edited by his sister Harriet, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original. |
| third person narration | When a story is told by someone who is an outsider and not a character |
| topos | a commonplace, an older term for motif deriving from classical rhetoric and denoting recurring formulas or types of situation in literary texts. |
| homonym | A word that has the same sound and the same spelling as another word. |
| mugging | exaggerating facial expressions. |
| overhang | A horizontal building projection, usually above a window, for the purpose of shading. |
| stage business | Small actions such as smoking, tying shoe laces, pouring a drink, buttoning a shirt. |
| censorship ordinance of 1559 | This law under Queen Elizabeth required the political censorship of public plays and all printed materials in matters of religion and the government |
| confessional poem | A relatively new (or recently defined) kind of poetry in which the speaker focuses on the poet´s own psychic biography |
| inversion | the changing of the usual order of words |
| story | A succession of events, which become a plot once the events are structured into a narrative. |
| rime | The vowel and any consonants that follow it |
| dactylic meter | one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones |
| speed! | A verbal cue that the audio tape is up to the desired recording speed. |
| paradox | A statement that contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contradictory to common sense, yet can be true when viewed from another angle. |
| skene | a low building in the back of the stage area in classical Greek theaters |
| parallelism | The repetition of syntactical similarities in passages closely connected for rhetorical effect, as in Pope's An Epistle to Dr |
| playwright | One who writes plays. |
| pathetic fallacy | The pathetic fallacy or anthropomorphic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations |
| cento | A poem composed wholly by using the works of other authors. |
| polyptoton | Repetition of the same word in different forms, achieved by varying the case, adding affixes, etc. |
| denotation | The direct and literal meaning of a word or phrase (as distinct from its implication) |
| tactile imagery | Verbal description that evokes the sense of touch |
| anaphora | a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines |
| discomfort glare factor | the numerical assessment of the capacity of a single source of brightness, such as a luminaire, in a given visual environment for producing discomfort capacity of a single source of brightness, such as a luminaire, in a given visual environment for producing discomfort (this term is obsolete and is retained only for reference and literature searches) |
| neoclassical period | literary period 1660-1785. |
| modern english | The English language since about 1500. |
| top | To deliver a line more energetically than the line delivery preceding it. |
| contemporary literature | Literature written "at the present moment." Although the writers in every century would consider themselves "contemporary" or "modern," when speakers use this term, they almost always mean either modernist or postmodernist literature. |
| cockney school of poetry | A mocking name for London romantic poets such as John Keats and Leigh Hunt (from a scathing review in Blackwood's Magazine in October 1817). |
| blues poem | A poem that typically reflects the feelings and experiences of African Americans during the slave era |
| exordium | In Western classical rhetoric, the exordium was the introductory portion of an oration |
| miscellanies - anthology | An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler |
| macaronic language | Macaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages, sometimes including bilingual puns, particularly when the languages are used in the same context (as opposed to different segments of a text being in different languages) |
| ellipsis | The non-metrical omission of letters or words whose absence does not impede the reader's ability to understand the expression |
| tautology | the same idea or concept is repeatedly expressed through additional words, phrases, or sentences. |
| trope | Trope has two meanings: (1) a rhetorical device or figure of speech involving shifts in the meaning of words--click on the tropes link for examples, (2) a short dialogue inserted into the church mass during the early Middle Ages as a sort of mini-drama. |
| double take | Looking at something or someone, then looking away, then quickly looking back. |
| malapropism | The use of an incorrect word that sounds similar to the correct one. |
| understatement | See Litotes |
| accentual verse | Lines whose rhythm arises from its stressed syllables rather than from the number of its syllables, or from the length of time devoted to their sounding |
| verisimilitude | from the Latin phrase verisimiles ("like the truth"); the internal truthfulness, lifelikeness, and consistency of the world created within any literary work when we judge that world on its own terms rather than in terms of its correspondence to the real world |
| elohist text | A source of the Torah. |
| blocking agent | A person, circumstance, or mentality that prevents two potential lovers from being together romantically |
| flipper | Easily removed false teeth for children, used for cosmetic purposes. |
| texture | A necessary quality of sensory detail that gives purpose and meaning to objects in the poetic text. |
| stanza | A division of lines in a poem. |
| drama | derived from the greek word dra, meaning "to do" or "to perform," the term drama may refer to a single play, a group of plays, or to all plays |
| medieval theatre | Medieval theatre refers to the theatre of Europe between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance |
| shooting script | Script from which a film is made |
| phonetic | Representing the sounds of speech with a set of distinct symbols, each denoting a single sound |
| neoclassic | An adjective referring to the Enlightenment |
| gas-filled lamp | an incandescent lamp in which the filament operates in a bulb filled with one or more inert gases. |
| eschatology | The branch of religious philosophy or theology focusing on the end of time, the afterlife, and the Last Judgment |
| mountweazel | Mountweazel is a bogus entry deliberately inserted in a reference work as a safeguard against copyright infringement. |
| sponsor | An organization or person who finances an advertisement or performance. |
| dialect | Regional variations in speech of a common language |
| image | A mental representation of a particular thing able to be visualized (and often able to be apprehended by senses other than sight). |
| dactyl | A metrical foot of three syllables, one long (or stressed) followed by two short (or unstressed), as in happily |
| king's english | The standard, pure or correct English speech or usage, also called "Queen's English." |
| long shot | A camera shot which captures the performer's complete body. |
| canticle | A hymn or religious song using words from any part of the Bible except the Psalms. |
| antagonist | See discussion under character, below. |
| pilot program | A program which is produced as one of a projected series to enable the producer to determine whether the producer will produce the series at a later date. |
| minor sentence | See "verbless sentence." |
| xenophanic | This adjective refers to itinerant poets who make use of satire and witticism |
| falling meter | refers to metrical feet which move from stressed to unstressed sounds, such as the trochaic foot and the dactylic foot |
| hyperbaton | An inversion of the normal grammatical word order; it may range from a single word moved from its usual place to a pair of words inverted or to even more extremes of syntactic displacement |
| turnaround | To shoot a scene from another direction. |
| couplet | A couplet is a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought |
| narratio | The part of an argument in which a speaker or writer provides a narrative account of what has happened and explains the nature of the case. |
| colloquial | refers to a type of informal diction that reflects casual, conversational language and often includes slang expressions |
| fluff | To fumble one's lines. |
| metonymy | Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept |
| hemp | A rope made from hemp fibres. |
| persuasion/persuasive writing | Writing intended to convince the reader that a position is valid or that the reader should take a specific action |
| scriptorium | An area set aside in a monastery for monks to work as scribes and copy books. |
| slate | Hinged board which, when clapped, provides a cue for editing sound and image |
| hyperbole | A bold, deliberate overstatement, e.g., "I'd give my right arm for a piece of pizza." Not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a statement. |
| metaphor | A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected |
| cothurni | A style of acting which is tragic. |
| intertextuality | Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts |
| fine cut | Final assembly of all the various audio and visual components of a film. |
| saturated | A colour containing a high percentage of colour is considered saturated . |
| near infrared | The region of the electromagnetic spectrum between 0.77 to 1.4 microns |
| participle | A verb form ending in –ing or –ed |
| sonnet | A form, usually only a single stanza, that offers several related possibilities for its rhyme scheme; however, it is always fourteen lines long and usually written in iambic pentameter |
| defamiliarisation | an effect of literary (‘poetic’) texts: ‘deviations’ from ordinary language use (foregrounded properties/artistic devices) disrupt the modes of everyday perception and renew the reader’s capacity for fresh sensation. |
| lux | The SI unit of illuminance equal to one lumen per square meter. |
| anglican church | The Protestant Church in England that originated when King Henry VIII broke his ties to the Vatican in Rome (the Catholic Church). |
| classical unities | as derived from Aristotle’s Poetics, the three principles of structure that require a play to have one plot (unity of action) that occurs in one place (unity of place) and within one day (unity of time); also called the dramatic unities |
| majuscule | See "capital letter." |
| plot | The way an author represents a chain of events within a literary work |
| catharsis | An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety |
| tenor and vehicle | According to I |
| pentateuch | This refers to the first five books of the Old Testament. |
| maxim - saying | A saying is something that is said, notable in one respect or another, to be "a pithy expression of wisdom or truth." |
| sermon joli | Another term for a sermon joyeaux |
| limerick | A poetic form named after Limerick, Ireland, consisting of five anapestic lines with a usual rhyme scheme of a a b b a |
| setting | Time period and place (which can include geographical location) of a story |
| anagnorisis | Anagnorisis (pronounced /ˌænəɡˈnɒrɨsɨs/; Ancient Greek: ἀναγνώρισις) is a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery |
| orthography | (1) The practice or study of correct spelling according to established usage |
| meter | Meter is the arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of stressed syllables. |
| synonym | A synonym is a word that has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word in the language, such as joyful, elated, glad. |
| overwriting | A wordy writing style characterized by excessive detail, needless repetition, outlandish figures of speech, and/or convoluted sentence structures. |
| lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. |
| pantoum | Arranged in repeated quatrains and patterns, the pantoum easily enchants with its close repetition of lines |
| metonymy | a figure of contiguity, one word is substituted for another on the basis of some material, causal, or conceptual relation. |
| concrete language | Points to actual events or facts as opposed to abstractions or vague language that speaks of events in terms that only the poet and a close circle of family and friends could understand. |
| epithalamium | A poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom. |
| minimal pair | Two words that differ in only one sound. |
| syllabus | An outline or abstract containing the major points included in a book, a course of lectures, an argument or a program of study. |
| line | A unit of verse whose length is prescribed by a criterion other than the right-hand margin of the page (e.g., a certain length in syllables, meeting a boundary rhyming word, completing a phrase). |
| pastoral | A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way. |
| audience | An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called the "reader"), theatre, music or academics in any medium |
| imperfect rhyme | Occurs when consonant and vowels sounds are not echoed exactly between words, but are still similar, either by sight or sound. |
| pentameter | A line of poetry that has five metrical feet. |
| narrowing | See "semantic narrowing." |
| main clause | A group of words made up of a subject and a predicate |
| telegraph | a play in which the audience is able to deduce what the outcome will be |
| characterization | The personality a character displays; also, the means by which an author reveals that personality |
| apophasis | Denying one's intention to talk or write about a subject, but making the denial in such a way |
| epistrophe | The repetition of a word, words, or expression at the end of two or more successive verses. |
| secundum comparatum | one of the three elements of a verbal comparison: the actual image that is used to describe an object/person, also called vehicle |
| psychoanalytic theory | Psychoanalytic theory refers to the definition and dynamics of personality development which underlie and guide psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy |
| drabble | an extremely short work of fiction containing exactly 100 words |
| theater of dionysus | The outdoor theater in Athens where Greek drama began as a part of religious rituals on the sloped side of the Acropolis in Athens. |
| inverse-square law | The law stating that the illuminance at a point on a surface varies directly with the intensity of a point source, and inversely as the square of the distance between that source and that surface. |
| wardrobe | A stock or collection of costumes |
| flyting | A contest of wits and insults between two Germanic warriors |
| sight/eye rhyme | Two or more words which appear to rhyme to the eye, in that their spelling is nearly identical; to the ear, however, they do not rhyme. |
| parable | a short work of fiction that illustrates an explicit moral but that, unlike a fable, lacks fantastic or anthropomorphic characters |
| apostrophe | Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea |
| carpe diem | the latin phrase meaning "seize the day" |
| line break | The division between each line in a poem. |
| antonym | A word that is opposite of another. |
| vates | The earliest Latin writers used vates to denote "prophets" and soothsayers in general; the word fell into disuse in Latin until it was revived by Virgil |
| production company | A company associated with the making of a production. |
| models of composition | In current-traditional rhetoric, a sequence of essays or themes (compositions) developed according to familiar "patterns of exposition." |
| humbug | someone who decives or misleads |
| tercet | a three-line stanza. |
| pathetic fallacy | An expression that endows inanimate things with human feelings. |
| conceit | An elaborate metaphor, artificially strained or far-fetched, in which the subject is compared with a simpler analogue usually chosen from nature or a familiar context |
| orality | The use of speech, rather than writing, as a means of communication, especially in communities where the tools of literacy are unfamiliar to the majority of the population. |
| ballade | A ballade is a type of poem, usually with three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines and a shorter final stanza (or envoy) of four or five lines |
| pastoral | Following Theocritus (3rd cent |
| bacchic | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, long, and long syllables / ~ ' ' /. |
| anadiplosis | Anadiplosis (pronounced /ænədɨˈploʊsɨs/, AN-ə-di-PLOH-sis; from the Greek: á¼Î½Î±Î´Î¯ÏλÏÏιÏ, anadàplÅsis, "a doubling, folding up") is the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause |
| classicism | The principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature |
| colloquial diction | see diction |
| proceleusmatic | A classical poetry, a metrical foot consisting of four short syllables. |
| video clip | A segment of videotape. |
| anachronism | Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period |
| internal narration or narrator | see narrator |
| saint's life | Another term for the medieval genre called a vita |
| progymnasmata | Progymnasmata (Greek "fore-exercises", Latin praeexercitamina) are rhetorical exercises gradually leading the student to familiarity with the elements of rhetoric, in preparation for their own practice speeches (gymnasmata, "exercises") and ultimately their own orations. |
| two shot | A medium close-up shot of two people. |
| wit | brief verbal expression which is intentionally contrived to create a comic surprise and combines humour and intellect. |
| golden line | The golden line is a type of Latin dactylic hexameter frequently mentioned in Latin classrooms in English speaking countries and in contemporary scholarship written in English. |
| figure of speech | A verbal expression in which words or sounds are arranged in a particular way to achieve a particular effect. |
| traditional symbol | see symbol |
| paradox | In literature, the paradox is an anomalous juxtaposition of incongruous ideas for the sake of striking exposition or unexpected insight |
| aria | operatic solo. |
| silent stress | A noticeable pause or musical rest with all the value of a beat in highly rhythmic verse |
| noun clause | A noun clause is a dependent clause that functions as a noun (that is, as a subject, object, or complement). |
| memoir | A memoir is a form of creative nonfiction in which an author recounts experiences from his or her life. |
| motif | A recurrent device, formula, or situation that deliberately connects a poem with preexisting patterns and conventions |
| catalectic | A type of verse termed by George Puttenham in 1589 "maimed" because it is missing a syllable in the last foot |
| phoneme | The smallest unit of speech sound that makes a difference in communication |
| aestheticism | Stemming from France, this European movement countered materialism and utilitarianism during the late 19th century. |
| claymation | Animation using three dimensional figures figures made of clay or plasticine. |
| poetic diction | A conventional subset of English vocabulary, phrasing, and grammatical usage judged appropriate for verse through its continuous usage by approved poets from the 18th century on and including effects like periphrasis and Latinate terminology |
| synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is used to designate the whole or the who is used to designate a part. |
| terminus a quo | The earliest possible date that a literary work could have been written, a potential starting point for dating a manuscript or text |
| epigram | A short, often satirical poem usually ending with a witty, ingenious turn of thought. |
| anachronological | non-chronological presentation of events on discourse level. |
| symbol | anything that stands for something else |
| consonance | The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, as in lost and past or confess and dismiss. |
| flux | A measure of the amount of light |
| hysteron proteron | The hysteron proteron (from the Greek: ὕστερον πρότερον, hà½steron prà³teron, "latter before") is a rhetorical device in which the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word |
| dirge | See discussion of elegy, below. |
| anapest | A metrical foot of three syllables, two short (or unstressed) followed by one long (or stressed), as in seventeen and to the moon |
| substitution | one metrical foot from a regular pattern is replaced by another one, this does not change the overall metrical pattern. |
| homophone | One of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or derivation or spelling |
| lay | A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels called trouveres. |
| synaeresis | When two vowels appear side-by-side within a single word, and the poet blurs them together into a single syllable to make his meter fit |
| slam | Please see Poetry Slam for definition. |
| ballade | A poem that usually contains three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines and a shorter final stanza (or envoy) of four or five lines |
| subplot | A second plot, usually one that involves minor characters |
| parallelism | the repetition of identical or similar syntactic elements (word or word type, phrase, clause). |
| troubadour | A troubadour was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100â1350) |
| anastrophe | A type of hyperbaton involving the inversion of the natural or usual syntactical order of a pair of words for rhetorical or poetic effect, as "hillocks green" for "green hillocks," or "high triumphs hold" for "hold high triumphs" in Milton's "L'Allegro," or from the same poem: |
| idealism | Values standards of perfection through subjectivity and imagination more than formal qualities or the faithful portrayal of nature. |
| künstlerroman | A Kà¼nstlerroman ("artist's novel") is a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman; it is a novel about an artist's growth to maturity |
| apothegm | An adage (pronounced /ˈædɨdʒ/), or adagium (Latin), is a short but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long use |
| nonverbal communication | The process of sending and receiving messages without using words, either spoken or written. |
| gloss | A gloss (from Latin: glossa, from Greek: γλῶσσα glóssa "tongue") is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text |
| fu poetry | Flowery, irregular "prose-poem" form of Chinese literature common during the Han period |
| metrical foot | See discussion uner meter or click here for a handout in PDF format. |
| tie line | (Also known as "trick" line) |
| débat | A medieval poem in dialogue that takes the form of a debate on a topic |
| genetic fallacy | The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context |
| panegyric | A poem in great praise of someone or something. |
| non-fiction novel | The non-fiction novel or faction is a literary genre which, broadly speaking, depicts real events narrated with techniques of fiction |
| concrete poetry | An attempt to supplement (or replace) verbal meaning with visual devices from painting and sculpture |
| legend | a type of tale conventionally set in the real world and in either the present or historical past, based on actual historical people and events, and offering an exaggerated or distorted version of the truth about those people and events |
| rhythm | The arrangement of stressed an unstressed syllables into a pattern |
| celtic revival | Irish poets such as George Russell (AE), James Joyce, John M |
| classification | Classification is a figure of speech linking a proper noun to a common noun using the or other articles. |
| sextain | A stanza or poem or six lines: |
| pan | Side to side camera sweep. |
| old english | Old English was the language spoken in England from around 450 to 1100. |
| criticism | Refers to the concept of analysis, evaluation and interpretation of literature. |
| epenthesis | Inserting of a sound mid word. |
| stress | The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. |
| literature | The art of written works |
| tenor | the meaning of an image, term introduced by the critic I.A |
| dramatic monologue | A poem in which a poetic speaker addresses either the reader or an internal listener at length |
| stress | A syllable uttered in a higher pitch than others |
| paraphrase | A brief restatement in one's own words of all or part of a literary or critical work, as opposed to quotation, in which one reproduces all or part of a literary or critical work word-for-word, exactly. |
| character man/woman | Talent who specializes in mature roles or roles that require specialized physical or vocal skills. |
| euphony | Harmony or beauty of sound which provides a pleasing effect to the ear, usually sought-for in poetry for effect |
| carpe diem | literally, "seize the day" in Latin, a common theme of literary works that emphasize the brevity of life and the need to make the most of the present |
| verse novel | see novel |
| pyrrhic | A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables. |
| connotation | The emotion or association that a word or phrase may arouse |
| pixelation | A type of stop-motion animation. |
| miranym | A word that is midway in meaning between two opposite extremes (or antonyms). |
| chansons de geste | An epic poem written in assonant verse about historical or legendary events or figures. |
| episodia | The Greek word for episode |
| subject | The general or specific area of concern of a poem; also called its topic. |
| end-stopped line | a syntactical unit comes to a close at the end of the line. |
| soliloquy | a characters speech that reveals inner thoughts and ideas |
| monosyllable | A word of one syllable. |
| canon | In a literary sense, the authoritative works of a particular writer; also, an accepted list of works perceived to represent a cultural, ideological, historical, or biblical grouping. |
| colloquialism | A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing |
| mutation | In linguistics, mutation is a change in a vowel sound caused by a sound in the following syllable. |
| review | An article giving a critique of a performance. |
| n-plural | The plural form of a few modern English weak nouns derives from the n-stem declension or n-plural of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) |
| aphesis | The omission of the initial syllable of a word |
| foveal vision | See central (foceal) iislon. |
| controlling metaphor | runs through an entire work and determines the form or nature of that work |
| belt | To sing in a forceful manner. |
| altitude | The vertical angular distance of a point in the sky above the horizon |
| interplay | the tension between the abstract metrical grid and the actual linguistic and metrical realisation of verse, the term was introduced by the critics W.K |
| black mountain poets | Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, all associated with Black Mountain College, North Carolina, and all promoting a non-traditional poetics. |
| dimmer | A device which controls the intensity of lights. |
| stage combat | 1 |
| trochaic rhyme | Another word for double rhyme in which the final rhyming word consists of a heavy stress followed by a light stress. |
| blinding glare | Glare that is so intense that, for an appreciable length of time after it has been removed, no object can be seen. |
| dramatis personae | literally, "persons of the drama" (Latin); the list of characters that appears either in a play’s program or at the top of the first page of the written play. |
| epiphany | a sudden revelation of truth, often inspired by a seemingly simple or commonplace event |
| tempo | The time or pace at which a play or part is taken |
| proscenium stage | see |
| historical linguistics | Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change |
| telling | a form of presentation where the mediator is very noticeable |
| disyllabic rhyme | A rhyme in which two final syllables of words have the same sound, as in fender and bender or beguile and revile. |
| imitative poem/structure | a poem structured so as to mirror as exactly as possible the structure of something that already exists as an object and can be seen. |
| outriggers | Sturdy support legs that assist in stabilizing stand and lifts. |
| echoic words | An onomatopoeic word or one which imitates natural sound. |
| belles-lettres | Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing |
| advance | Money received before rendering services. |
| octave | a rhythmic group of eight lines of verse |
| humour | Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement |
| adjective | A word that describes somebody or something |
| location filming | Filming at a location out of a studio. |
| connotation | Those words, things, or ideas with which a word often keeps company but which it does not actually denote |
| narrator focaliser | see focalisation |
| rhetorical device | departure from what speakers of a particular language apprehend to be the standard meaning of words, or the standard order of words used to achieve some special meaning or effect, rhetorical devices can be divided into rhetorical schemes (or figures) and rhetorical tropes. |
| line | A unit in the structure of a poem consisting of one or more metrical feet arranged as a rhythmical entity. |
| bestiary | A medieval treatise listing, naming, and describing various animals and their attribute |
| rear elevation | Scale drawing that depicts a rear view of the set. |
| matte shot | Combining two different shots on one print so it looks as if a single had been taken all at once. |
| epizenxis | Repetition of a word several times without connectives. |
| connotation | What is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly and directly describes (compare denotation) |
| syllable | One or more letters consisting of one or more vowel sounds in a word that work as a single unit of spoken language. |
| special effect | A Technical effect. |
| onset | The part of the syllable that precedes the vowel |
| syllable | A vowel preceded by from zero to three consonants ("awl" .. |
| cywdd deuair hirion | In Welsh prosody, the term refers to a form of light verse consisting of a single couplet with seventeen syllables |
| alexandrine | A line of poetry that has 12 syllables |
| kilowatt | 1000 watts. |
| minutes | The official written record of a meeting. |
| clerestory | That part of a building rising clear of the roofs or other parts, whose walls contain windows for lighting the interior. |
| word scenery | rhetorically created setting in a play. |
| v.o. | Voice over. |
| rhyme | The similarity or association of accented sounds in two or more words. |
| regionalism | In literature, regionalism or local color fictionality refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features â including characters, dialects, customs, history, and topography â of a particular region. |
| message | In rhetorical studies and communication studies, the information conveyed by (a) words (in speech or writing), and/or (b) other signs and symbols. |
| classicism | The principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature. |
| pay-television | Broadcast TV that requires the viewer to make a payment to receive a specific program. |
| personification / prosopopoeia | animals, ideas, abstractions or inanimate objects are endowed with human characteristics. |
| figure of speech | A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning familiar to the reader |
| mock-heroic | Treating something trivial with high seriousness, as in John Philips' The Splendid Shilling. |
| anapestic | referring to a metrical form in which each foot consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one—for example, "There are mán- | y who sáy | that a dóg | has his dáy" (Dylan Thomas, "The Song of the Mischievous Dog") |
| paronomasia / pun | wordplay, using words with the same or similar sounds or spelling but different meanings, usually for comic or satirical effect |
| antithesis | Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposed or antithetical meanings. |
| evaluate | See discuss |
| dark adaptation | the process by which the retina becomes adapted to a luminance less than about 0.034 cd/m^2. |
| meiosis | To belittle, use a degrading epithet, often through a trope of one word; rhetorical understatement. |
| melodeum | small organ, invented in US |
| beat generation | The Beat Generation is a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired |
| octave | A stanza of eight lines. |
| alliteration | the repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable |
| verb | A word, or set of words, that expresses action or state of being. |
| exit discharge | the portion of a means of egress between the conclusion of an exit and a public way. |
| poetry | A form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject |
| foot | A basic unit of meter consisting of a set number of strong stresses and light stresses |
| utopia | A place in which social, legal, and political justice and perfect harmony exist. |
| parallelism | Two or more expressions that share traits, whether metrical, lexical, figurative, or grammatical, and can take the form of a list. |
| emergency lighting | lighting designed to supply illumination essential to safety of life and property in the event of failure of the normal supply |
| xfade | CROSS FADE. |
| refrain | A refrain is a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a song or poem, especially at the end of each stanza; chorus. |
| antinovel | An antinovel is any experimental work of fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the novel |
| consonance | Repetition of consonant (non-vowel) sounds in some other position than in the beginning of a word |
| chanson de geste | An epic poem of the 11th to the 14th century, written in Old French, which details the exploits of a historical or legendary figure, especially Charlemagne. |
| nonce word | From the expression, for the nonce, a word coined or used for a special circumstance or occasion only, |
| cliffhanger | A melodramatic narrative (especially in films, magazines, or serially published novels) in which each section "ends" at a suspenseful or dramatic moment, ensuring that the audience will watch the next film or read the next installment to find out what happens |
| exit | the portion of a means of egress that segregates all other spaces in the building or structure by fire resistant construction in order to provide a protected way of travel to the exit discharge |
| polysyndeton | A figure of speech where successive clauses or phrases are linked by one or more conjunctions. |
| foul papers | Rough drafts of a manuscript that have not been corrected and are not to be sent to the printers |
| extreme close-up | A shot in which the subject fills the entire frame. |
| kill | To switch off. |
| schism | A schism is a split or division in the church concerning religious belief or organizational structure--one in which a single church splits into two or more separate denominations--often hostile to each other |
| simile | A comparison made between two dissimilar things through the use of a specific word of comparison such as Like, as, than, or resembles |
| liturgy | A liturgy is a form of public worship. |
| distich | A strophic unit of two lines; a pair of poetic lines or verses which together comprise a complete sense. |
| super objective | The script writer's objective in writing the play. |
| whip pan | An extremely fast pan which blurs motion. |
| red herring | Frequently used in mystery stories; a clue, event, or statement designed to throw the reader off the track. |
| enclitic | Collocated to the end of another word, with a dependent meaning. |
| alliosis | While presenting a reader with only two alternatives may result in the logical fallacy known as false dichotomy or either/or fallacy, creating a parallel sentence using two alternatives in parallel structure can be an effective device rhetorically and artistically |
| roman à clef | Roman à clef or roman à clà© (French for novel with a key, is the term used for a novel describing real life, behind a faà§ade of fiction |
| oeuvre | all of the works verifiably written by one author. |
| hexameter | A hexameter is a line of poetry that has six metrical feet. |
| hiatus | Time during which a TV series is not in production. |
| close reading | a critical practice which closely investigates the composition of texts with regard to their unifying principles |
| anapest | Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one, as in "unabridged" (see foot). |
| act | the division or unit of a dramatic narrative |
| fourfold meaning | Another term for fourfold interpretation, this word refers to the medieval idea that every passage in the Bible can be interpreted according to at least one of four possible levels of meaning |
| noise | In communication studies, anything that interferes in the communication process between a speaker and an audience. |
| talent scout | an agent who seeks out talented people to work in the acting or modeling business. |
| middle style | In classical rhetoric, the middle style is represented by speech or writing that falls between the extremes of the plain style and the grand style. |
| closed turn | To turn away from the audience. |
| mask | To hide from view. |
| aside | In drama, a few words or a short passage spoken by one character to the audience while the other a |
| aposiopesis | An interruption of an expresion without a subsequent restarting |
| pure poetry | Verse that aims to delight rather than to instruct the reader. |
| episode | An episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program |
| representative character | A flat character who embodies all of the other members of a group (such as teachers, students, cowboys, detectives, and so on) |
| poetry | Poetry is literature in metrical form, i.e |
| apocope | In phonology, apocope (pronounced /əˈpɒkəpiː/, from the Greek apokoptein "cutting off", from apo- "away from" and koptein "to cut") is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel. |
| enjambement | The running over of a sentence or phrase from one verse to the next, without terminal punctuation, hence not end-stopped |
| stereotype | A stereotype is a held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals |
| encomium | A speech or composition in high praise of a person, object, or event. |
| dealer commercial | Commercial produced and paid for by a national advertiser which is then turned over to local dealers to book air time, usually with the dealer's tag added. |
| inversion | Another term for anastrophe. |
| anagram | a word or phrase made from the letters of another word or phrase |
| post production | Activities that occur after filming has ended. |
| lay | A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels called trouvères |
| antonymy | Semantic contrasts. |
| antiphon | A sacred poem with responses or alternative parts. |
| union scale | A schedule of minimum payments as defined by a union contract. |
| truncated line - acatalexis | An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot |
| hold | 1 |
| dialogue | a reciprocal conversation between two or more persons; the speaking lines of a script. |
| instrument | A lighting unit. |
| simile | A comparison using like or as. |
| proceleus maticus | A Classical Greek and Latin foot having four short syllables. |
| feminism | The intellectual, philosophical and political discourse aimed at equal rights and legal protection for women |
| understudy | 1 |
| advertising agency | A company that does artwork and production for advertisements. |
| syntax | In linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek σύνταξις "arrangement" from ÏÏν syn, "together", and τάξις tà¡xis, "an ordering") is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages. |
| completeness | The second aspect of Aristotle's requirements for a tragedy |
| speaking part | a role for which there are spoken lines. |
| matinée | An afternoon performance; also known as the "Morning Performance." |
| myth | A traditional story passed down through generations that explains why the world is the way it is |
| chorus performer | Performer hired as a group of singers, dancers or actors. |
| jacobean | During the reign of King James I, i.e., between the years 1603-1625 |
| epigraph | A quotation on the title page of a book or a motto heading a section of a work, suggesting what the theme or central idea will be. |
| main idea | In informational or expository writing, the most important thought or overall position |
| tautology | A statement redundant in itself, such as "The stars, O astral bodies!" |
| overregularization | A part of the language-learning process in which children extend regular grammatical patterns to irregular words. |
| objective correlative | An objective correlative is a literary term referring to a symbolic article used to provide explicit, rather than implicit, access to such traditionally inexplicable concepts as emotion or colour. |
| oxymoron | a figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory elements, as in wise fool. |
| crisis or turning point | A point of great tension in a narrative that determines how the action will come out. |
| model | a performer engaged to display or physically illustrate a product, idea or service. |
| mother tongue | A person's native language--that is, a language learned from birth. |
| salver | serving tray sine qua non: something essential sophistries: deceptive reasoning or excuses sponging: always borrowing money spurious: false or counterfeit supercilious: arrogant |
| ictus | the stress. |
| editorial omniscience | refers to an intrusion by the narrator in order to evaluate a character for a reader, as when the narrator of The Scarlet Letter describes Hester's relationship to the Puritan community |
| setting | the time and place in which a portion of the story is taking place |
| figure of speech | ways of using language that deviate from the literal, denotative meanings of words in order to suggest additional meanings or effects; they say one thing in terms of something else. |
| exitance coefficient | the ratio of the average initial (time zero) wall or ceiling cavity exitance to the lamp flux per unit floor area |
| dieresis | The pronunciation of two adjacent vowels within a word as separate sounds rather than as a diphthong, as in coordinate; also, the mark indicating the separate pronunciation, as in naïve. |
| abusio | A type of catachresis known as the "mixed metaphor." The term is often used in a derogatory manner |
| underplot | a particular type of subplot, especially in Shakespeare’s plays, that is a parodic or highly romantic version of the main plot |
| anachronism | The placement of an event, person, or thing out of its proper chronological relationship, sometimes unintentional, but often deliberate as an exercise of poetic license. |
| new rhetoric | New rhetoric is a catch-all term for various efforts in the modern era to revive, redefine, and/or broaden the scope of classical rhetoric in light of contemporary theory and practice. |
| acrostic | A poem in which the first or last letters of each line vertically form a word, phrase, or sentence |
| sky cloth | A back curtain painted to represent sky in the distance |
| holograph | A holograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of the person whose signature it bears |
| ballad stanza | A four-line stanza, the second and fourth lines of which are iambic trimeter and rhyme with each other; the first and third lines, in iambic tetrameter, do not rhyme |
| mythos | the term used by Aristotle to denote the material (the story) on which a literary text is based. |
| roundelay | A lyric poems with a refrain. |
| hiatus | In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant |
| peer-reviewed journal | A journal which contains articles of a scholarly nature. The articles have been reviewed by others who are experts in their field. This therefore creates a higher degree of reliability for the articles in such a publication. |
| formal diction | see diction |
| ballad | A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung |
| convention | A widely used and device or technique that an audience traditionally agrees to accept as part of the theatrical production |
| monologophobia | Monologophobia is a fear of using a word more than once in a single sentence or paragraph. |
| slam poetry | Performance poetry in which poems are recited aloud and dramatized |
| but not too closely | OK, so he thinks there are rules but they’re not really “rules” |
| backdrop | A vertical surface which is used to form the background. |
| blockbuster | Hit A movie which is a huge financial success. |
| scan | To mark off lines of poetry into rhythmic units, or feet, to provide a visual representation of their metrical structure, as illustrated with the following lines from "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk," by William Cowper (written in anapestic trimeter): |
| romantic period | literary period 1785-1830 |
| personification | An anthropomorphic figure of speech where the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a non-human form as if it were a person |
| critical reading | Careful analysis of an essay's structure and logic in order to determine the validity of an argument |
| sestet | a rhythmic group of six lines of verse |
| prothalamion | See Epithalamion. |
| epiphany | in fiction, when a character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself; a truth which is grasped in an ordinary rather than a melodramatic moment |
| ploce | The general term for a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated in close proximity within a clause or line, usually for emphasis or for extended significance, as "a wife who was a wife indeed" or "there are medicines and medicines." |
| duplet | A two-syllable foot. |
| middle english | The language spoken in England from about 1100 to 1500. |
| epizeuxis | In linguistics, an epizeuxis is the repetition of words in immediate succession, for vehemence or emphasis. |
| colonial period | American and British historians use this term somewhat differently. |
| sick verse | Mordant, black-humoured or horrific works such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," Robert Browning's "‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’," and Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee." This term was popularized by George Macbeth's anthology Penguin Book of Sick Verse (1963). |
| breve | A mark overtop a vowel to indicate a short vowel sound |
| narrator | The person or voice telling the story |
| blank verse | A type of verse that approximates the rhythm of natural prose. |
| voucher | A form used to record arrival and departure times and pay rates |
| anachronism | The word anachronism is derived from Greek |
| apologue | An apologue (from the Greek "αÏολογοÏ," a "statement" or "account") is a brief fable or allegorical story with pointed or exaggerated details, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for a moral doctrine or to convey a useful lesson without stating it explicitly |
| litterateur - intellectual | An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence (thought and reason) and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity. |
| enjambment | in poetry, the technique of running over from one line to the next without stop, as in the following lines by William Wordsworth: "My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky." The lines themselves would be described as enjambed. |
| vellum | The skin of a young calf used as a writing surface--the medieval equivalent of "paper." A technical distinction is usually made between vellum and parchment; the latter is made from goatskin or sheepskin |
| denotation | the dictionary meaning of a word |
| clause | A group of related words that has both a subject and a predicate |
| refraction | The process by which the direction of light changes as it passes obliquely from one medium to another in which its speed is different. |
| public domain | Any litarary work which is no longer protected by copyright law. |
| western fiction | Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier (usually anywhere west of the Mississippi River) and typically set during the late nineteenth century |
| triad | A triad in simplest terms is defined as a "group of three". |
| convention | a characteristic of literary genre that is understood and accepted by audiences because it has come, through usage and time, to be recognized as a familiar technique |
| metanalysis | A reinterpretation of the division between words or syntactic units. |
| bouts-rimés | Bouts-Rimés, literally (from the French) "rhymed-ends", is the name given to a kind of poetic game defined by Addison, in the Spectator, as |
| meiosis | Understatement, the opposite of exaggeration: "I was somewhat worried when the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw." (i.e., I was terrified) |
| phonics | The study of sounds |
| amperage | A component of electricity used to measure the number of electrons moving past a given point in a circuit. |
| foley effects | Incidental sound effects added in synchronization to filmed footage |
| infinitive | A verb form that is usually introduced by to. |
| broadside | A broadside is the side of a ship; the battery of cannon on one side of a warship; or their simultaneous (or near simultaneous) fire in naval warfare. |
| sermon | See discussion under homily. |
| under-sixes | Children under 6 years of age. |
| textual matter | the words of something written |
| anadiplosis / reduplicatio | (Greek for ”doubling back”) the word or phrase that concludes one line or clause is repeated at the beginning of the next. |
| boulevard theatre | Boulevard theatre is a theatrical aesthetic which emerged from the boulevards of Paris's old city. |
| chronicle | Any kind of serial historical account. |
| epizeuxis | see geminatio. |
| madrigal | An Italian short poem or part song suitable for singing by three or more voices, first appearing in England in the anthology Musica Transalpina |
| minced oath | A moderate form of swearing: a type of euphemism in which a profane or offensive term is replaced by a similar-sounding word or phrase that expresses a comparable sentiment in a less objectionable way. |
| connotation | a person's individual definition of a word; the set of ideas associated with a word in addition to its explicit meaning |
| amphitheater | a theater consisting of a stage area surrounded by a semicircle of tiered seats. |
| consisting | Made up of or composed of. |
| commercial sound studio | A studio that provides space, equipment and engineers to ad agencies, producers and others for a fee. |
| scan | Scan may refer to: |
| septenary | Another term for heptameter--a line consisting of seven metrical feet. |
| neoclassic couplet | See discussion under heroic couplet. |
| scriptorium | A location often in a church or monastery where manuscripts are studied and stored. |
| improvisation | A work or performance that is done on the spur of the moment, without conscious preparation or preliminary drafts or rehearsals |
| anthology | An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler |
| amptp | Alliance Of Motion Picture And Television Producers. |
| psychological/psychoanalytical criticism | an approach to literary criticism influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud which attempts to interpret literary texts with regard to the author’s psychological state or the psychology of the text itself. |
| memoir | A memoir (from the French: mà©moire from the Latin memoria, meaning "memory", or a reminiscence), is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography â although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable in modern parlance |
| mystification | The use of language to deceive others or to disguise the conditions of our social existence. |
| textuality | Textuality is a concept in linguistics and literary theory that refers to the attributes that distinguish the text (a technical term indicating any communicative content under analysis) as an object of study in those fields |
| feudalism | The medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state |
| composite | A variety of photos printed on one sheet; represents an actor's different looks. |
| figurative language | Language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense |
| counting | A technique of determining stylistic qualities of a piece of writing by counting the numbers of words in paragraphs or sentences, and determining the average number of modifiers, average word lengths, and so on. |
| pierrette | A female member of a company of pierrots |
| elegy | A lament conveying the circumstances of a loss of a loved one; more broadly, a somber meditation on the passing of men and the things they value. |
| breakdown services ltd. | A company that provides to talent agencies descriptions of roles being cast for film and television projects. |
| prosimetrum | A prosimetrum (Latin) is a literary piece that is made up of alternating passages of prose and poetry. |
| triple rhyme | Three consecutive syllables at the end of two or more lines that rhyme. |
| duologue | Conversation between two characters. |
| anthropomorphism | A figure of speech where the poet characterizes an abstract thing or object as if it were a person |
| muggins | simple or ignorant person |
| middle english period | literary period 1066-1500 |
| mask | To hide from view |
| cadence | The musical rhythm of language in prose or verse. |
| personification | A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: dead leaves dance in the wind, blind justice. |
| dialect | A representation of the speech patterns of a particular region or social group |
| epanalepsis | see redditio. |
| tragic flaw - hamartia | Hamartia (Ancient Greek: ἁμαρτία) is a term developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics |
| archetype | A recurrent image that emerges from deep-seated associations that are anchored in universal patterns or structures of experience |
| rhythm | The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry |
| italic | The branch of Indo-European languages giving rise to Latin and Romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian |
| end rhyme | A rhyme in the last syllables of lines of verse. |
| orthoepy | The customary or "correct" pronunciation of words. |
| canon | The concept of an accepted list of great literature which constitutes the essential tradition of English |
| rising action | Those events in a play that lead to a turning point in the action. |
| room cavity ratio | In lighting calculations, a measure of room proportion as determined by dimensions of length, width, and height. |
| regency novel | Regency novels are either: |
| libretto | The text part of a musical, opera or other musical production; as opposed to the lyrics and the music. |
| noun | A word that is the class name of something: a person, place, thing, or idea |
| full rhyme | Another term for perfect rhyme, true rhyme, or exact rhyme, see above. |
| bridge | (a) A transverse section of the stage capable of being raised or lowered |
| bombast | This is pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language |
| caudate rhyme | Another term for tail-rhyme or rime couée |
| premiere | The first official public screening of a production. |
| simile | a comparison using "like" or "as." She was as cold as ice. |
| rhetorical schemes | describe the arrangement of individual sounds (phonological schemes), words (morphological schemes) or sentence structure (syntactical schemes). |
| concrete poem | a poem written in the shape of its subject |
| premise | The statement that forms the basis of an argument. |
| leaf - bookbinding | Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material |
| truss section | A sturdy, lightweight support structure. |
| affiliate | An independent, local broadcast station under contract with a national or regional broadcasting company, for the purpose of broadcasting the national or regional company's programs. |
| parataxis | Linking clauses just by sequencing them, often without conjunction(s) and only by means of associations that are implied, not stated. |
| nonameter | Nine feet per line. |
| toenail | to nail obliquely through the end of one board into a second board |
| group flashing light | a flashing light in which the flashes are combined in groups, each including the same number of |
| pantomime | (a) A play in dumb show |
| acquit | to find an accused person innocent in a court of law |
| apostrophe | an address, either to someone who is absent and therefore cannot hear the speaker or to something nonhuman that cannot comprehend |
| censorship | Mandatory changes to content of a performance imposed upon the producers of a production by an outside person or organization. |
| entr'acte | See Interact |
| dolly shot | A moving shot taken from a dolly which moves the camera toward or away from the subject. |
| maker | A medieval and early Renaissance term for ‘poet.’ |
| simile | A simile describes something or someone 'like' or 'as' something else |
| frost | A filter used to soften the edges of a light beam. |
| triad | A group of three |
| voice | See speaker, poetic. |
| attitude | An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for an item |
| facetiae | A bookseller's term for obscene or humorous books. |
| syllable | A word or part of a word representing a sound produced as a unit by a single impulse of the voice, consisting of either a vowel sound alone as in oh or a vowel with attendant consonants, as in throne. |
| dark humor | A sardonic, sarcastic, paradoxical form of humor that allows readers or audiences to observe and find comedy in disastrous or sobering events such as death, illness, misforture, or other events that normally sadden and disturb. |
| poetic license | While most often used to describe the poet's liberty to depart from prosaic diction and standard syntactical structures to achieve a desired effect, poetic license also includes the freedom for creative deviations from historical fact in the subject matter, such as the use of anachronisms. |
| oratory | Oratory is the art of public speaking. |
| line | In poetry, a line is a single row of words. |
| still | A photograph derived from a motion picture frame. |
| hexameter | Six feet per line. |
| thunder sheet | Large suspended sheet of metal which when shaken produces a thunder-like rumble |
| spot line | A block fixed in any position on the grid to enable scenery to be flown out of alignment |
| pun | A word or phrase, sometimes referred to as a “play on words,” that suggests multiple meanings or interpretations. |
| catenation | the way words are linked in pronunciation. |
| burlesque | A work caricaturing another serious work |
| plot | the arrangement of the action |
| connotation | associations and implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations of the people making it |
| eye-rhyme | See Rhyme. |
| syntax | The way in which linguistic elements (words and phrases) are arranged to form grammatical structure. |
| closet drama | see drama. |
| diacritic | An accent or change to a normal alphabetical letter to differentiate its pronunciation |
| antithesis | the opposition of words or phrases against each other in balances contrast. |
| hymn | A religious song consisting of one or more repeating rhythmical stanzas |
| juves | Short for"Juveniles" - the child members of the company. |
| objective case | The case or function of a pronoun when it is the direct or indirect object of a verb or verbal, the object of a preposition, the subject of an infinitive, or an appositive to an object. |
| envoy | Also spelled, envoi, the word envoy refers to a postscript added to the end of a prose writing or a short verse stanza (often using different meter and rhyme) attached to the conclusion of a poem |
| closed form | What a poet achieves when they follow a particular form or pattern with rhyme scheme and meter; poems generally look regular and symmetrical; words are perfectly used and placed, leaving no room for enhancement. |
| expressionism | Expressionism was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the start of the 20th century |
| candela | The SI unit of luminous intensity (formerly called the candle) |
| living newspaper | Living Newspaper is a term for a theatrical form presenting factual information on current events to a popular audience |
| satirical comedy | A type of comedy that intends to underline the vices of society |
| suspension of disbelief | An explanation for incredible or unrealistic elements in a work of literature |
| stanzas | Groups of lines, usually in some predetermined pattern of meter and rhyme, that are set off from one another by a space. |
| tear sheets | Samples retained from various model assignments featured in print material. |
| victorian | Verse written in the reign of Victoria, from 1837 to 1901. |
| pardons | Another term for papal indulgences |
| simile | A comparison of two unlike things in which a word of comparison (often like or as) is used |
| poetaster | "A vile petty poet" (Samuel Johnson, 1755). |
| personification | an inanimate object is given life-like qualities. Sandburg describes Chicago |
| antibacchic | Classical Greek and Latin foot consisting of long, long, and short syllables / ' ' ~ / |
| misplaced modifier | Misplaced modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that do not clearly relate to the words they are intended to modify. |
| reader-response criticism | Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or "audience") and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. |
| sestina | Composed of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by an envoy of three unrhymed lines, in which there is a recurrent pattern of end words |
| set-back | A framing for doors and windows to give the appearance of thickness to a scene |
| syncope | The elision of an unstressed syllable so as to keep to a strict accentual-syllabic metre |
| played time | see story time. |
| conventional symbol | meanings that are widely recognized by a society or culture |
| kothorni | See buskins. |
| single plot | narratives or plays with only one plot line |
| analogue | Usually a semantic or narrative feature in one work said to resemble something in another work, without necessarily implying that a cause-and-effect relationship exists (as would be the case with source and influence) |
| obituary | An obituary is a published notice of a person's death, often with a brief biography of the deceased. |
| echo | A reference that recalls a word, phrase, or sound in another text |
| onomatopoeia | An onomatopoeia or onomatopÅia (Greek ὀνοματοποιία; ὄνομα for "name" and ποιέω for "I make", adjectival form: "onomatopoeic" or "onomatopoetic") is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes |
| antispast | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, long, long, and short syllables (i.e., an iambus and a trochee) / ~ ' ' ~ / |
| rhetoric | The art of effective expression and the persuasive use of language |
| academic | As an adjective describing style, this word means dry and theoretical writing |
| room tone | A recording which records existing noise at the location |
| alliteration | Using the same consonant to start two or more stressed words or syllables in a phrase or verse line, or using a series of vowels to begin such words or syllables in sequence |
| major role | 1 |
| suspense | the tension that the reader or audience experiences when the outcome of events or the cause for certain results in a narrative or play are uncertain. |
| run-on lines | Lines in which the thought continues into the next line, as opposed to end-stopped. |
| archetype | a term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in a reader |
| iambic | See discussion under meter. |
| biography | An account of a person’s life written by another person. |
| palinode | An ode or song that retracts what the poet wrote in a previous poem; a recantation. |
| trouvère | TrouvÈre (is the Northern French (langue d'oà¯l) form of the word trobador (as spelled in the langue d'oc) |
| character | Person in a literary work, sometime referred to as flat or round. |
| reversal | See peripeteia. |
| notional agreement | Agreement (or concord) of verbs with their subjects and of pronouns with their antecedent nouns on the basis of meaning rather than grammatical form. |
| fable | A short, simple story that teaches a lesson |
| metanoia | A rhetorical term for the act of self-correction in speech or writing. |
| ciphered | figured out |
| nowell codex | The common scholarly nickname for the medieval manuscript that contains Beowulf |
| project | To speak loudly and clearly. |
| anacrucis | One or two unstressed syllables at the beginning of a line that are unnecessary to the metre. |
| narrating i | in a homodiegetic narrative situation the narrator’s person and perception of events at the time of narration (compare |
| figurative language | writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally |
| cacophony | language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce |
| phonetic symbolism | Sound suggestiveness; the association of particular word-sounds with common areas of meaning so that other words of similar sounds come to be associated with those meanings |
| initiation story | a kind of short story in which a character—often a child or young person—first learns a significant, usually life-changing truth about the universe, society, people, or himself or herself; also called a coming-of-age story |
| controlling image | A single image or comparison that extends throughout a literary work and shapes its meaning |
| metalanguage | Language used in talking about language. |
| anagram | A word, phrase, or sentence that can be rearranged to create another word, phrase, or sentence. |
| below-the-line expenses | Production costs not included in the above-the-line expenses, such as material costs, music rights, publicity, trailer, etc. |
| victorian period | literary period 1832-1901. |
| wipe | A transition device in which a new image replaces an existing image as the new image fills the screen from left to right or right to left of the screen. |
| autobiography | see biography |
| eye rhyme | words may look alike but do not rhyme at all |
| freytag’s pyramid | a diagram of plot structure first created by the German novelist and critic Gustav Freytag (1816–1895). |
| trimeter | A line consisting of three metrical feet |
| antithesis | The place of a line or one of its parts against another to which it is opposed to form a balanced contrast of ideas. |
| hypocorism | A hypocorism (from Greek ὑποκορίζεσθαι hypokorizesthai, "to use child-talk") is a shorter form of a word or given name, for example, when used in more intimate situations as a nickname or term of endearment. |
| children's agent | An agent who specializing in the representation of child performers. |
| grand | 1 |
| extended metaphor | A comparison between unlike things that serves as a unifying element throughout a series of sentences or a whole piece |
| mandative subjunctive | The mandative subjunctive refers to the use of the subjunctive mood in a subordinate clause that follows an expression of command, demand, or recommendation. |
| setting | The time and place of the action. |
| end rhyme | occurs when rhyming words come at the end of lines |
| plot | The action or sequence of events in a story |
| textual criticism | Textual criticism (or lower criticism) is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts |
| euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality |
| personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape |
| mechanics | In composition, the conventions governing the technical aspects of writing, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations. |
| metaphor | a figure of similarity, a word or phrase is replaced by an expression denoting an analogous circumstance in a different semantic field |
| anticlimax | n |
| acephalous | (Greek, ‘headless’) |
| exemplum | A narrative that teaches a moral. |
| cycle | see sequence. |
| closet drama | a play that is written to be read rather than be performed onstage |
| play | A script that is intended to be performed live. |
| multiple exclamation points | Two or more exclamation points (!!!) following a word or sentence. |
| narrative | a story format that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events |
| anime | A style of animation that had its roots in Japanese comic book art style. |
| speaker | A person who speaks, as well as someone who gives a speech or a talk. |
| oulipo | Oulipo (French pronunciation: [ulipo], short for French: Ouvroir de littà©rature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature") is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques |
| heptameter | Seven feet, a measure made up of seven feet (fourteeners) |
| close reading | Reading a piece of literature carefully, bit by bit, in order to analyze the significance of every individual word, image, and artistic ornament |
| couplet | A pair of lines, almost always rhyming, that form a unit. |
| feminine ending or rhyme | see Rhyme. |
| homographs | Two words with identical spellings, but different meanings and pronunciations (i.e |
| flat characters | Characters who are two-dimensional because they do not develop during the course of the novel or play. |
| safe area | The area in camera 's viewfinder just outside of the "viewable" area in the viewfinder. |
| high-key lighting | a type of lighting that |
| trochee | A trochee is a metrical foot of two syllables, one long (or stressed) and one short (or unstressed) |
| informational/expository text | Nonfiction writing in narrative or non-narrative form that is intended to inform |
| harlem renaissance | A movement in the early 1900s in which African-Americans made strong, impressionable influences on American society, politics, music, literature, and culture after migrating from the South to a new suburb in New York City called Harlem |
| antithesis | A figure of speech in which a thought is balanced with a contrasting thought in parallel arrangements of words and phrases, such as, "he promised wealth and provided poverty," or "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, " or from Pope's An Epistle to Dr |
| antepenultima | The second last word of a line, or the second last syllable of a word. |
| amphibrach | Three syllables in this order: unstressed, stressed, unstressed. |
| foam technician | Person responsible for creating foam latex prosthetic appliances. |
| hypotaxis | Hypotaxis is the grammatical arrangement of functionally similar but "unequal" constructs (hypo="beneath", taxis="arrangement"), i.e., constructs playing an unequal role in a sentence. |
| epiphany | A moment of sudden realization or understanding in which the true meaning of certain events is revealed. |
| pastoral | A form of poetry that imitates and celebrates the virtues of rural life. |
| word-painting | the creation of vivid images of scenery and atmosphere in the viewer’s mind by means of rhetorical devices . |
| composition | (of writing) The putting together of words in a correct and effective way. |
| stress | In linguistics, the emphasis, length and loudness that mark one syllable as more pronounced than another |
| black box | Type of performance space that is small, created out of a room, painted all black. |
| periphrasis | Using a wordy phrase to describe something for which one term exists. |
| dmx 512 | A unique digital multiplex signal with specific characteristics that is used in the stage and studio lighting industry. |
| onomatopoeia | The formation or use of words that imitate sounds, or any word whose sound is suggestive of its meaning. |
| chorus | A person or group of people which stand outside the action and remark upon it |
| autotelic | Autotelic is defined by one "having a purpose in and not apart from itself" |
| amplification | Rhetorical figures of speech that repeat and vary the expression of a thought. |
| amphigouri | A verse composition which, while apparently coherent, contains no sense or meaning, as in Nephelidia, a poem written by A |
| kigo | Kigo (季語 "season word") (plural kigo) is a word or phrase associated with a particular season, used in Japanese poetry |
| merism | A rhetorical term for a pair of contrasting words used to express totality or completeness. |
| thesis | A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for a degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings |
| parallel structure | The same grammatical structure of parts within a sentence or of sentences within a paragraph |
| decibel | Measurement of sound volume. |
| victorianism | Victorianism is the name given to the attitudes, art, and culture of the later two-thirds of the 19th century |
| antonym | In lexical semantics, opposites are words that lie in an inherently incompatible binary relationship as in the opposite pairs male : female, long : short, up : down, and precede : follow |
| heptameter | A heptameter is a line of poetry that has seven metrical feet. |
| epitaph | An epitaph (from Greek ἐπιτάφιον epitaphion "a funeral oration" from ἐπί epi "at, over" and τάφος taphos "tomb") is a short text honouring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively |
| watermark | A watermark is a recognizable image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when viewed by transmitted light (or when viewed by reflected light, atop a dark background), caused by thickness or density variations in the paper.[1] There are two main ways of producing watermarks in paper; the dandy roll process, and the more complex cylinder mould process. |
| inversion | A reversal of the usual order or words to receive some sort of emphasis. |
| tragedy | Dramatic form in which the protagonist suffers a grave loss or death at the end |
| hue | The attribute of a color that allows it to be classified as red, yellow, blue, and so on. |
| abolitionist | person who workes to end slavery in the United States |
| feminine rhyme | Feminine rhyme is a rhyme either of two syllables of which the second is unstressed (double rhyme), as in motion, notion, or of three syllables of which the second and third are unstressed (triple rhyme), as in fortunate, importunate. |
| meter | The formal organization of the rhythm of a line into regular patterns; see foot, scansion. |
| figure of speech | Literary device used to create a special effect or feeling, often by making some type of comparison |
| cel | A sheet, usually made of a clear material, upon which an image is drawn and which is then used as an animation frame. |
| pathos | Is an element in artistic expression that evokes pity, sorrow, or compassion. |
| parallelism | The use of phrases, clauses, or sentences that are similar or complementary in structure or in meaning. |
| allegro | Happily |
| terzain | A stanza of three lines. |
| impressionism | Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s |
| pentameter | Five feet per line. |
| cultural criticism | an approach to literature that focuses on the historical as well as social, political, and economic contexts of a work |
| encore | The demand by the audience for a repetition of a song, dance, etc |
| schwa | A neutral single vowel sound representing the unstressed vowel in English. |
| fill light | supplementary illumination to reduce shadow or contrast range. |
| internal rhyme | Occurs when a rhyme is partially or completely contained within lines of poetry, as opposed to always appearing at the end of lines. |
| nonfiction | Prose accounts of real people, places, objects, or events. |
| ethos | Ethos is an English word based on a Greek word and denotes the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, a nation or an ideology |
| malapropism | Absurd or humorous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound. |
| direction | Guidance and instructions from the director. |
| tanka | A form of Japanese verse that originated in the seventh century, consisting of thirty-one syllables in lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven |
| stage right/left | 1 |
| dissonance | Cacaphony, or harsh-sounding language. |
| greek theatre | Theatre that flourished from approximately 600 BC to 200 BC around what is now Athens, Greece |
| exposition | Information essential to the understanding of the dramatic action |
| organization | Organization is the arrangement of ideas, incidents, evidence, or details in a perceptible order in a paragraph or essay. |
| prefix | A word part that is added to the beginning of a base word that changes the sense or meaning of the root or base word |
| mora | Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress or timing) in some languages |
| gvs | The abbreviation that linguists and scholars of English use to refer to the Great Vowel Shift |
| diphthong | Speech sound beginning with one vowel sound and moving to another vowel sound within the same syllable |
| figurative language | language that uses figures of speech. |
| epigram | a brief, pointed, and witty poem that usually makes a satiric humorous point |
| spot announcement | An advertising or public service broadcast message between 10 to 120 seconds long. |
| couplet | A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length, termed "closed" when they form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence, and termed "heroic" in 17th- and 18th-century verse when serious in subject, five-foot iambic in form, and holding a complete thought. |
| pyrrhic | Two unstressed syllables in a metrical foot; syllables usually composed of two one-syllable words that are secondary to the meaning of the phrase |
| cut | A narrow transverse section of the stage that can be opened |
| leg model | A model who has attractive legs for showing hosiery, beauty products for legs, shoes, etc. |
| foreshadowing | A writer's use of hints or clues to indicate events that will occur in a story |
| climax | The high point, or turning point, in a story—usually the most intense point near the end of a story |
| dissolve | Transition from one shot to another by briefly superimposing one image upon another and then allowing the first image to fade away. |
| drama | (a) Plays in general |
| resolution | see conclusion. |
| synesthesia | An alternative spelling of synaesthesia, above. |
| bell board | A sound effects board on which are mounted different types of bells (doorbells, phone bells, etc.) |
| slow-down | see stretch |
| macaronic verse | Poems that consist of expressions in more than one language |
| focalisation | an aspect of narration which deals with the question ‘who sees’, ‘whose perspective is adopted?’ External focalisation has the centre of perception outside the story and thus this type of focaliser is also called narrator focaliser, in internal focalisation the focus of perception of a character in the story is adopted |
| quatrain | A four-line stanza, whether rhymed or unrhymed |
| the five ws | a series of journalistic questions that identify various information |
| folktale | A short narrative handed down through oral tradition, with various tellers and groups modifying it, so that it acquired cumulative authorship |
| straight man | One who delivers straight lines to a comic. |
| metaphor | a comparison not using "like" or "as." She is ice. |
| euphemism | The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that might offend or suggest something unpleasant. |
| head sheet | A letter size sheet with approximately 15 to 20 reduced size head shots on one page. |
| freeze | To stop all movement. |
| dramatic irony | creates a discrepancy between what a character believes or says and what the reader or audience member knows to be true |
| luminance | The luminous intensity of a surface in a given direction per unit area of that surface as viewed from that direction; often incorrectly referred to as "brightness." |
| parable | A brief story that teaches a lesson. |
| gerund | A verb form that ends in –ing and is used as a noun |
| haiku | a form of syllabic verse originating in Japan |
| book | To be offered and accept a role. |
| meronym | A word that denotes a constituent part or a member of something. |
| refrain | A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza. |
| neoclassicism | A "new classicism," as in the writings of early 18th-century writers like Addison and Pope who imitated classical Greek and Latin authors. |
| vhs | 1/2" videocassette format. |
| amphitheatre | an oval or round structure having levels of seats rising outward from an open space or arena. |
| circumlocution | Speaking around a point rather than getting to it, such as S |
| conventions | Standard ways of saying things in verse, employed to achieve certain expected effects |
| tradition | A customary practice or a widely accepted way of viewing or representing things; it usually includes many conventions. |
| freeze frame | An effect in which a single frame is repeated to give the illusion that all action has stopped. |
| simile | a figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection, as in "My love is like a red, red rose." An analogy is an extended simile |
| tweak | To make small adjustments. |
| choric figure | Any character in any type of narrative literature that serves the same purpose as a chorus in drama by remaining detached from the main action and commenting upon or explaining this action to the audience |
| fly system | 1 |
| ottava rima | Originally Italian, a stanza of eight lines of heroic verse, rhyming abababcc |
| in memoriam stanza | Quatrain with the rhyme scheme abba (sometimes termed an envelope), written in iambic tetrameter, and named after Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem of the same name. |
| anamorphic lens | Camera lens that distorts a wide image to fit on a narrower 35mm frame of film. |
| composition | Placement of people or objects within the performing area or film frame. |
| meaning | In semantics, the message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context. |
| spasmodic school | P |
| occasional poem | A poem written to describe or comment on a particular event or occasion |
| emendation - improve | Improve means to make something better. |
| renaissance | There are two common uses of the word. |
| tone | Where texture denotes tangible qualities in a poem, tone reflects what is intangible |
| character | a person presented in a dramatic or narrative work, and characterization is the process by which a writer makes that person seem real |
| glare | the sensation produced by luminance within the visual field that is sufficiently greater than the luminance to which the eyes arc adapted to cause annoyance, discomfort or loss in visual performance and visibility |
| fluorescence | the emission of light (luminescence) as the result of, and only during, the absorption of radiation of shorter wavelengths. |
| metrical substitution | A way of varying poetic meter by taking a single foot of the normal meter and replacing it with a foot of different meter |
| end-stopped line | a poetic line that has a pause at the end |
| death of the novel | The death of the novel is the common name for the theoretical discussion of the declining importance of the novel as literary form |
| distich | Two lines related to one another |
| measure | Poetic rhythm or cadence as determined by the syllables in a line of poetry with respect to quantity and accent; also, meter; also, a metrical foot. |
| first folio | A set of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623 |
| classic | Three broad meanings include, firstly, works from ancient Greece or Rome ('classical' times) |
| dale's classification of rhymes | An Introduction To Rhyme (ISBN 1-85725-124-5) is a book by Peter Dale which was published by Agenda/Bellew in 1998 |
| latino/ latina writing | Writing by Hispanic immigrants and their descendents. |
| abstract diction | words expressing ideas or concepts |
| bard | Originally a Celtic name for a poet-singer. |
| paradox | a daring statement which unites seemingly contradictory words but which on closer examination proves to have unexpected meaning and truth. |
| paeon | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of three short and one long syllables: the first paeon / ' ~ ~ ~ /, the second paeon / ~ ' ~ ~ /, the third paeon / ~ ~ ' ~ /, and the fourth paeon / ~ ~ ~ ' /. |
| nonce word | A word coined or used for a special occasion. |
| structuralism | A term coined by Jakobson in 1929, which represented a new scholarly paradigm for the humanities and social sciences as well as a dialectical synthesis of the two global paradigms dominating European thought in the 19th century—Romanticism and Positivism |
| property master | Responsible for obtaining or constructing props and their use during the production. |
| onomastics | The study of proper names, especially the names of people and places. |
| alexandrine | A line of poetry that has 12 syllables. |
| broad comedy | A part or play in which the comic element is made obvious |
| terminus ad quem | The latest possible date that a literary work could have been written, a potential ending point for dating a manuscript or text |
| true rhyme | Words that rhyme on a single stressed syllable. |
| dedication | A formal, printed inscription printed in a book dedicating it to a person, cause, etc. |
| analogue | The term analogue is used in literary history in two related senses: |
| modernism | An important movement in the early to mid-twentieth century that broke with traditional subjects and poetic forms to discover or create a new and contemporary means of personal expression |
| ear poetry | see Concrete poetry. |
| transmission factor | The ability of a medium to allow for the transmission of light. |
| ottava rima | An ottava rima is a poem consisting of 10- or 11-syllable lines arranged in 8-line octaves with the rhyme scheme abababcc. |
| showing | the direct (mimetic) presentation of speech or action (opposite: telling). |
| anapodoton | Deliberately creating a sentence fragment by the omission of a clause: "If only you came with me!" If only students knew what anapodoton was! Good writers never use sentence fragments? Ah, but they can |
| convention | A common way of doing something, such as a poetic form, or a common topic like the "carpe diem" or "ubi sunt" themes, or making lists (see Catalogue verse), or a regularly-used figure of speech. |
| type | An earlier figure, event, or symbol in the Old Testament thought to prefigure a coming antitype (corresponding figure, event, or symbol) in the New Testament |
| noun phrase | A word group that includes a noun and its modifiers. |
| mosaic rhyme | A rhyme in which two or more words produce a multiple rhyme, either with two or more other words, as go for / no more, or with one longer word, as cop a plea / monopoly |
| metric foot | a unit of poetry consisting of at least one stressed and one unstressed syllable |
| diction | An author's choice of words based on their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness. |
| aubade | A song or poem with a motif of greeting the dawn, often involving the parting of lovers, or a call for a beloved to arise, as in Shakespeare's "Song," from Cymbeline. |
| logical fallacy - fallacy | In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is incorrect reasoning in argumentation resulting in a misconception |
| screening | An exhibition of a film. |
| spiking the lens | To look directly into the lens |
| monomyth | a story structure or pattern, also called the Hero’s Journey, a common narrative storytelling technique, detailing the mythological sequence of events surrounding one person |
| hemispherical transmittance | the ratio of the transmitted |
| zoom | To change the field of view through the use of an adjustable lens. |
| gather | Gather, gatherer, or gathering may refer to: |
| diamante | The diamante, or diamond, poem is a style of poetry made up of 6 lines, using only 13 words, and forms the shape of a diamond |
| old comedy | The Athenian comedies dating to 400-499 BCE, featuring invective, satire, ribald humor, and song and dance |
| paronym | A word derived from or related to another word; also, the form in one language for a word in another, as in the English canal for the Latin canalis. |
| studio | A building or room in which a visual or audio production is produced |
| cancel | A bibliographical term referring to a leaf which is substituted for one removed by the printers because of an error |
| cinematographer | Person responsible for all aspects of filming. |
| consonance | Consonance is the repetition of consonants or of a consonant pattern, especially at the ends of words. |
| stare | This is the way grammar works in normal English sentences |
| caesura | a pause within a line of a poem that contributes to the rhythm of the line |
| foot | Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rythm in a poem. |
| overture | The music which begins a performance. |
| objective correlative | T |
| asteismus | A sub-category of puns |
| event | something that happens in the story (with a discernable agent: action, without agent: happening). |
| action poetry | Verse written for performance by several voices. |
| exact rhyme | they share the same stressed vowel sounds as well as sharing sounds that follow the vowel |
| plot | Sequence of events in a story where each event causes the next event to happen. |
| repetition | The return of a word, phrase, stanza form, or effect in any form of literature |
| mutual intelligibility | Mutual intelligibility is a situation in which two or more speakers of a language (or of closely related languages) can understand each other. |
| body makeup | Makeup applied below the neck or above the wrists. |
| historiated initial | In the artwork of medieval manuscripts, a historiated initial is an enlarged, introductory letter in a written word that contains within the body of the letter a pictoral scene or figure related to the text it introduces |
| cacophony | In poetry, cacophony is using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. |
| memory board | A contral console that has computerized functions and an ability to electronically store data. |
| anapestic meter | two unstressed syllables followed by one unstressed one |
| audio | Pertaining to sound or sound technology. |
| comment | a narrative mode where the narrator explicitly or implicitly evaluates events or characters in the story |
| convention | in literature, a standard or traditional way of presenting or expressing something, or a traditional or characteristic feature of a particular literary genre or subgenre |
| subject matter | The issue or topic that is the focus of a discussion or text. |
| translation | Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text |
| bridge | Music linking two scenes. |
| filter | a device for changing, by transmission or reflection, the magnitude or spectral composition of the flux incident upon it |
| blue pages | Pages inserted into a script after it has been numbered and distributed |
| persona | the voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share the values of the actual author; also called implied author. |
| biography | a work of nonfiction that recounts the life of a real person |
| digraph | Two successive letters that make a single sound |
| accent | The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word. |
| virelay | A medieval French poetic form, consisting of short lines in stanzas with only two rhymes, where the final rhyme of one stanza becomes the main rhyme of the next. |
| context | Indicates the place of a given passage or section of a literature in relation to the parts which immediately precede and follow it |
| rhyme royal | Rhyme royal (or Rime royal) is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. |
| dimeter | Two feet; sometimes termed dipody, a double foot, that is, one measure made up of two feet |
| narrative "eh" | Use of the particle "eh" as a discourse marker to signal a transition, invite agreement, or intensify a question or command. |
| infrared radiation | Radiation with wavelengths too long to be perceived by the human eye (that is, longer than 0.77 microns) and less than 1,000 microns |
| oxymoron | Uses words that are contradictory or incongruous but whose surprising juxtaposition expresses a truth or has a dramatic effect. |
| paraphrase | Paraphrase is restatement of a text or passages, using other words |
| allegory | a narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning because of its events, actions, characters, setting, and objects represent specific abstractions or ideas |
| bretons | The Celtic inhabitants of Brittany ("Little Britain") in northeast France who speak the Breton language |
| fovea | A small region at the center of the retina, subtending about two degrees and forming the site of the most distinct vision and greatest color discrimination. |
| occasional poem | A poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private (e.g., Maya Angelou´s poem for the 1993 presidential inauguration, "On the Pulse of Morning") |
| secondary source | A critique or evaluation of a primary source. For example, a review of "Rear Window." |
| haikai | Another term for haikai renga or renku |
| literature | the art of written work, literally “things made from letters.” (Wiki) |
| canon | the range of works that a consensus of scholars, teachers, and readers of a particular time and culture consider "great" or "major." |
| ampacity | The maximum allowable electrical current, in amperes, that a conductor can safely carry |
| playing time | time it takes to stage a play, see also |
| wash | Even, overall light on performance space or background. |
| glossmeter | an instrument for measuring gloss in terms of the directionally selective reflecting properties of a material at angles near to and including the direction giving specular reflection. |
| syntax | The arrangement of words to form phrases, clauses and sentences; sentence construction |
| senryu | A short Japenese poem that is similar to a haiku in structure but treats human beings rather than nature, often in a humurous or satiric way. |
| nonrestrictive element | A word, phrase, or clause that provides added (though not essential) information to a sentence but does not limit or restrict the element it modifies. |
| neologism | A neologism is a newly coined word, expression, or usage that is not yet commonly used. |
| daylight factor | a measure of daylight illuminance at a point on a given plane, expressed as the ratio of the illuminance |
| metre - meter | * Metrical foot - Foot (prosody) |
| thesis | The unaccented part of a poetic foot; also, the first part of an antithetical figure of speech. |
| layin on o hands | a form of christian healing |
| figure of speech | One of many kinds of word-play, focusing either on sound and word-order (schemes) or on semantics (tropes) |
| repetition | the use of any element of language-a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence-more than once |
| scrim | A gauzy curtain, used for special effects, that is transparent if lit from behind, but opaque when lit from the front. |
| interview | A meeting between agent or client and talent to see if the talent is right for the job. |
| flush-mounted or recessed luminaire | a luminaire which is mounted above the ceiling (or behind a wall or other surface) with the opening of the luminaire level with the surface. |
| morality play | type of medieval drama which presented allegories of man’s life and search for salvation. |
| slapstick | Two pieces of wood loosely joined at one end |
| coursework | Essays or work done in a student's own time, rather than in examination conditions |
| pre-production | Activities that occur prior to filming. |
| iamb | An iamb is a metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long (or stressed) |
| independent clause | Presents a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence |
| trestle | the framework used to support a platform |
| field angle | the angle between the two directions for which the intensity is 10% of the maximum intensity measured in a plane through the nominal beam centerline |
| narrative | That which tells a story. |
| quire | A collection of individual leaves sewn together, usually containing between four and twelve leaves per quire |
| onomatopoeia | Use of a word or words the sound of which approximates the sound of the thing denoted (e.g., "splash"). |
| acrostic | An acrostic is a series of lines or verses in which the first, last or other particular letters, when taken in order, spell out a word or phrase. |
| lift | A height adjustable stand or tower. |
| tragic hero | A tragic hero is usually the main character in a piece of work |
| emblem book | Emblem books are a category of illustrated book printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, typically containing a number of emblematic images with explanatory text. |
| series regular | A lead in a television series who appears in all the episodes. |
| homophone | A word that has the same sound as another word but a different spelling and meaning. |
| tale | A simple narrative |
| in the moment | Involved in the immediate emotional motivation. |
| feminine rhyme | Occurs between words in which an unstressed syllable follows a stressed syllable. |
| stage props | properties (i.e |
| stanza | A stanza is an arrangement of a certain number of lines, usually four or more, sometimes having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme, forming a division of a poem. |
| parody | A ludicrous imitation, usually intended for comic effect but often for ridicule, of both the style and content of another work |
| effect | An event or a moment intended to create a particular emotional reaction. |
| allegory | A work in which related symbols work together to produce a moral lesson or indication of progress |
| breve | A mark in the shape of a bowl-like half circle that indicates a light stress or an unaccented syllable. |
| electra complex | the female version of the Oedipus complex |
| alliteration | The repetition of sounds in nearby words, most often involving the initial consonants of words (and sometimes the internal consonants in stressed syllables). |
| alliteration | In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words and/or phrases |
| literal meaning | A meaning that is the primary or strict meaning of a word or phrase; not figurative or metaphorical. |
| hemistich | The approximate half of a line of poetic verse |
| in medias res | In medias res or medias in res (into the middle of things) is a Latin phrase denoting the literary and artistic narrative technique wherein the relation of a story begins either at the mid-point or at the conclusion, rather than at the beginning (cf |
| epicureanism | A philosophy derived from the writing of Epicurus who believed the seeking of pleasure to be good but with an emphasis on simplicity of life. |
| texture | A two dimensional image that is overlaid onto three dimensional geometry to give the impression of a texture in computer modeling. For example you might create an image of rusty steel and then lay it on a geometric model of a steel beam. The texture added to the shape gives us information about what the beam is made from and what sort of state it is in. |
| dry | To forget ones lines. |
| apocope | The omission of the last syllable of a word |
| simile | A comparison made with "as," "like," or "than." |
| euphony | (good sound), refers to language that is smooth and musically pleasant to the ear |
| form | The arrangement, manner, or method used to convey the content; how ideas or a story is represented. |
| exegesis | (1) In Roman times, the term exegesis applied to professional government interpretation of omens, dreams, and sacred laws, as Cuddon notes (315) |
| epithalamiom | Epithalamium (Latin form of Greek ἐπιθαλάμιον epithalamion from ἐπί epi "upon," and Î¸Î¬Î»Î±Î¼Î¿Ï thalamos nuptial chamber) refers to a form of poem that is written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber |
| dichroic | A type of metallic coating applied to glass and some other materials that allows certain wavelengths of light, or other electro magnetic radiation, to pass while reflecting all others. |
| isocolon | A line or lines that consist of clauses of equal length. |
| figure of sound | Conveys and reinforces the meaning or experience of poetry through the skillful use of sound. |
| couplet | In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought |
| andante | walking space. |
| aubade | a poem in which the coming of dawn is either celebrated, as in Billy Collins’s "Morning," or denounced as a nuisance, as in John Donne’s "The Sun Rising." |
| chorus | A chorus is part of a song or poem that is repeated following each verse (aka refrain). |
| allegory | A figurative illustration of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience in a narrative or description by the use of symbolic fictional figures and actions which the reader can interpret as a resemblance to the subject's properties and circumstances. |
| hexameter | Six feet; sometimes termed hexapody, a six-part foot, one measure made up of six feet |
| prose poem | Continuous, non-end-stopped writing that has other traits of poetry and is, from its context, associated with poems. |
| sequence | a series of scenes that create a segment |
| poem | Defined by Samuel Johnson in his great dictionary (1755) as "The work of a poet; a metrical composition." |
| extrametrical verse - acatalexis | An acatalectic line of verse is one having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot |
| cross above | To move upstage. |
| azimuth | The horizontal angular distance between the vertical plane containing a point in the sky and true south. |
| transferred epithet - hypallage | Hypallage (pronounced /haɪˈpælədʒiː/, from the Greek: ὑπαλλαγή, hypallagḗ, "interchange, exchange") is a literary device that is the reversal of the syntactic relation of two words (as in "her beauty's face"). |
| commercial artist | One who does artwork for advertising purposes. |
| simile | A comparison between two words or ideas using “like” or “as.” |
| pace | Tempo at which a scene or act is played. |
| polyptoton /metabole | one word is repeated in different grammatical or syntactical (inflected) forms |
| fricative | A vocalization produced by forcing breath through a narrow opening in the mouth (such as the letters f, s, v and z.) |
| primary source | The original document, for example the short story "Rear Window." |
| copy | the written words of a script or advertisement. |
| burlesque | Burlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. |
| consonance | Repetition of the same consonant sounds before and after a different vowel, e.g |
| historical novel | According to Encyclopà¦dia Britannica, a historical novel is: "a novel that has as its setting a period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic detail and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to historical fact |
| simile | two things are openly compared with each other, using by ‘like’ or ‘as’. |
| memoir | see biography |
| setting | The place or period within which a narrative or play is located |
| root | A word or word element to which prefixes and suffixes may be added to make other words |
| implied metaphor | a more subtle comparison between two unlike things without using "like" or "as"; the terms being compared are not so specifically explained or stated outright |
| lullaby | A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process |
| cyhydedd naw ban | A syllabic verse form in ancient Welsh poetry in which some lines are composed of nine syllables |
| tercet | A unit or group of three lines of verse which are rhymed together or have a rhyme scheme that interlaces with an adjoining tercet. |
| cd | Compact Disc |
| hypallage | A type of hyperbaton involving an interchange of elements in a phrase or sentence so that a displaced word is in a grammatical relationship with another that it does not logically qualify, as in: |
| optative | Optative is a category of grammatical mood that expresses a wish, hope, or desire. |
| shaped poetry | See concrete poetry. |
| convention | A literary rule, practice or custom, which has been established through frequent and common usage in texts. |
| informal modeling | Model work in a department or retail store or other commercial establishment where the model is not on a platform and can iinteract with customers. |
| variorum | A variorum edition is any published version of an author's work that contains notes and comments by a number of scholars and critics |
| apocalypse | From the Greek word apocalypsis ("unveiling"), an apocalypse originally referred to a mystical revelation of a spiritual truth, but has changed in twentieth-century use to refer specifically to mystical visions concerning the end of the world |
| gonzo journalism | Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written subjectively, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative |
| persona | The person who is talking from whose point of view the ideas and story in the poem are expressed. |
| spatial setting | see setting |
| metathesis | Metathesis is a rhetorical term for the transposition within a word of letters, sounds, or syllables. |
| contextual symbol | can be a setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings |
| escape literature | Fiction written with the primary purpose being for the reader to escape from reality. |
| rhetorical question | A question solely for effect, with no answer expected |
| satire | A literary work which exposes and ridicules human vices or folly |
| storyline | A brief summary of a production. |
| foley artist | Someone who creates foley sound effects. |
| dim | To lower the amount of voltage to a fixture, thereby decreasing its light output. |
| imperfect foot | A metrical foot consisting of a single syllable, either heavily or lightly stressed |
| metaliterature | Literary art focused on the subject of literary art itself |
| incandescence | The emission of visible electromagnetic radiation due to the thermal excitation of atoms or molecules. |
| camera | A device for recording images. |
| headset | A headphone/microphone combination used in communications systems. |
| palindrome | A word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. |
| vers de socià©tà© | Vers de socià©tà©, a term for social or familiar poetry, which was originally borrowed from the French, and has now come to rank as an English expression. |
| above minimum fee | Fees contracted at rates in excess of the minimum fees and terms provided in a basic agreement. |
| newspeak | Deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public. |
| head rhyme | Another term for alliteration--especially alliteration of consonants at the beginning of words, rather than alliteration of internal consonants within the bodies of words |
| markedness | Markedness is a relationship between linguistic elements in which one element is more distinctively marked than another unmarked element. |
| kenning | A kenning is a poetic phrase of one line used in place of a person / place / object, for example 'a wave rider','for','a boat' |
| press agent | One who arranges advertising and publicity. |
| tetrameter | A line consisting of four metrical feet |
| serpentine verses | Verses ending with the same word with which they begin. |
| pun | An expression that uses a homonym (two different words spelled identically) to deliver two or more meanings at the same time |
| narrative poem/structure | a poem that tells a story. |
| ubi sunt | A literary motif dealing with the transitory nature of things, like life, beauty, youth, etc. |
| märchen | A technical German word used in folklore scholarship to refer to fairy tales |
| trochee | A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable |
| poets' corner | A portion of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey which contains the remains of many famous literary figures, including Chaucer and Spenser, and also displays memorials to others who are buried elsewhere. |
| marginal modal | A verb that displays some but not all of the properties of an auxiliary. |
| yarn | A tale or story |
| pentameter | Pentameter is a line of poetry that has five metrical feet. |
| mini series | Episodic program with a set number of episodes; for TV broadcast. |
| formula | An often repeated phrase, sometimes half-a-line long and metrically distinctive. |
| pause | A break or suspension in a line of verse. |
| report | a narrative mode where speech, thought or action are rendered indirectly thus creating a distance between the event, the utterance and the reader’s perception of it, in most cases it informs about events in the story. |
| colloquial diction | characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation |
| ellipsoidal reflector spotlight | a spotlight in which a lamp and an ellipsoidal reflector are mounted in a fixed relationship directing a beam of light into an aperture, where it may be shaped by a pattern, iris, shutter system or other insertion |
| verse drama | see drama. |
| narrative | Telling a story |
| formal diction | adhering to traditional standards of correctness and without casual, contracted, and colloquial forms |
| demo tape | (DEMO REEL) An audio or video tape containing scene or sound clips that actors and their agents use for auditions. |
| main verb | A main verb in English is (1) any verb that is not an auxiliary verb, and/or (2) the verb in a main clause. |
| choree | A trochee. |
| object | A noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that receives or is affected by the action of a verb within a sentence. |
| flashtube | a tube of glass or fused quartz with electrodes at the ends and filled with a gas, usually xenon |
| stage | To present a performance. |
| domestic run | Television broadcast of a program within the broadcast area of a particular station. |
| autobiography | An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a book about the life of a person, written by that person. |
| oral | Pertaining to spoken words |
| rich rhyme | two rhyme words with the same sound (phonemes) from the least stressed vowel onwards and the same consonant preceding the last stressed vowel. |
| style | What a poem says is one thing |
| wings | 1 |
| critique | A critical analysis of a literary work. |
| nickname | A nickname is a familiar form of a proper name, or any descriptive name or epithet used informally. |
| rhyme | A rhyme is a word that is identical to another in its terminal sound: 'while' is a rhyme for 'mile'. |
| rhetorical question | A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question posed for its persuasive effect without the expectation of a reply (e.g.: "Why me?") Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to think about what the (often obvious) answer to the question must be |
| verso | See discussion under quarto or examine this chart. |
| rostrum | A moveable, raised platform. |
| flat character | see character |
| auditor | an imaginary listener within a literary work, as opposed to the reader or audience outside the work. |
| russian formalism | a theory which considers literary language as deviant from everyday language and postulates the concept of poetic function of literary texts. |
| anaphora | Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines |
| prolepsise | Prolepsis may refer to: |
| tetrapody | A group of words or a line of verse containing four feet |
| black comedy | Black humour (from the French humour noir) is a term coined by Surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935, to designate the sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynism and skepticism |
| primal scene | In psychoanalysis, the primal scene is the initial witnessing by a child of a sex act, usually between the parents, that traumatizes the psychosexual development of that child |
| rhythm | the occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words (usually vowel and consonant sounds) |
| aristotle | Greek philosopher (384-322 BC) First and most important dramatic theorist of the Western World |
| narration | In composition studies, one of the traditional modes of discourse that recounts an event or a series of related events. |
| tab | See "Batten" |
| morph | In linguistics, morph is a word segment that represents one morpheme in sound or writing. |
| company | The dancers and chorus members in a production |
| spaghetti western | A western filmed in Italy. |
| heroic couplet | Two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter, where the first line ends with a slight pause and the second is end-stopped. |
| parody | A not-uncomplimentary send-up of another work, such as Geoffrey Chaucer's "Sir Thopas" in The Canterbury Tales |
| antimetabole | In rhetoric, antimetabole (pronounced /æntɨməˈtæbəliː/ AN-ti-mə-TAB-ə-lee) is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed grammatical order (e.g., "I know what I like, and I like what I know") |
| epistle | A verse epistle imitates the form of a personal letter, addressed to someone in particular, often very personal and occasional, and sometimes dated, with a location affixed |
| university wits | University Wits were a group of late 16th century English playwrights who were educated at the universities (Oxford or Cambridge) and who became playwrights and popular secular writers |
| doxolojer | hucks misuse of the word "doxology" which is a hymn or prayer |
| sound devices | Resources used by writers of verse to convey and reinforce the meaning or experience of poetry through the skillful use of sound. |
| situation | The context of the action in a poem; that is, what is happening when the poem begins. |
| diegesis | the verbal representation of events. |
| musical director | Responsible for the music in a production, music arrangements and rehearsals, and conducts the band or orchestra. |
| late modern english | The English language as it is used from 1800 to the present day. |
| realism | Poets of the realist movement endeavored to accurately portray nature and real life without idealization, employing simple language, simple form, and clear images. |
| muse | A source of inspiration, a guiding genius. |
| dinner theater | A restaurant that also stages theatrical productions |
| understatement | Understatement is a form of speech which contains an expression of less strength than what would be expected |
| noncount noun | See "mass noun." |
| negation | Negation is a grammatical construction that contradicts (or negates) part or all of a sentence's meaning. |
| refrain | A refrain (from Vulgar Latin refringere, "to repeat", and later from Old French refraindre) is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song |
| summoner | Medieval law courts were divided into civil courts that tried public offenses and ecclesiastical courts that tried offenses against the church |
| anaphora | In rhetoric, an anaphora (Greek: ἀναφορά, "carrying back") is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis |
| metaphor | A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected. |
| metrical pause | A "rest" or "hold" that has a temporal value, usually to compensate for the omission of an unstressed syllable in a foot. |
| presentational | 1 |
| rhetorical trope | a device of figurative language which represents a deviation from the common or main significance of a word or phrase (semantic figures) or include specific appeals to the audience (pragmatic figures). |
| non prime time | TV broadcast time before 7 p.m |
| hyperbole | exaggeration. I would slay dragons to prove my love. |
| epitrite | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, long, long, and long syllables / ~ ' ' ' / in any order. |
| tone | The author's attitude towards the characters or the story. |
| octave | An octave is a verse form consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter (in English) or of hendecasyllables (in Italian) |
| linguistics | Linguistics is the scientific study of human language |
| end rhyme | is the most common form of rhyme in poetry; the rhyme comes at the end of the lines |
| fovea | a small region at the center nf the retina, subtending about 2°, containing cones but no rods and forming the site of most distinct vision. |
| octameter | A verse containing eight feet |
| antitype | A figure, event, or symbol in the New Testament thought to be prefigured by a different figure, event, or symbol in the Old Testament |
| static character | see character |
| new zealand english | New Zealand English is a variety of the English language that is used in New Zealand. |
| descriptive poem/structure | a poem organized as a description of someone or something. |
| diffuse transmission | the process by which the incident flux passing through a surface or medium is scattered. |
| central consciousness | a character whose inner thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are revealed by a third-person limited narrator who does not reveal the thoughts, perceptions, or feelings of other characters. |
| personification | When life is given to inanimate objects. |
| tract | A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature |
| private symbol | In contrast with an archetype (universal symbol), a private symbol is one that an individual artist arbitrarily assigns a personal meaning to |
| apocrypha | In the context of fiction, apocrypha includes those fictional stories that do not belong within a fictional universe's canon, yet still have some authority relating to that fictional universe |
| elevation | A working drawing showing the side view of the set or lighting arrangement. |
| commonwealth literature | Post-colonial literature from countries who are members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. |
| drop box | A plug box that can be dropped where power is needed. |
| ottava rima | A type of poetry consisting of 10 or 11 syllable lines arranged in 8-line "octaves" with the rhyme scheme of abababcc. |
| hokku | Hokku is the opening verse of a linked verse series |
| quantitative metre | Lines whose rhythm depends on the duration or length of time a line takes to utter |
| anapest | An anapest is a metrical foot of three syllables, the first two short, the last long |
| barndoor | A device with 2/4 or 8 doors for masking a light beam off areas. |
| mimesis | A rhetorical term for the imitation, reenactment, or re-creation of someone else's words, manner of speaking, and/or delivery. |
| voiced and unvoiced | Consonants are voiced when the vocal cords move (/b/) and unvoiced when they remain still (/p/). |
| polysyndeton | Using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect in a sentence |
| aureate language | Polysyllabic Latinate poetic diction employed especially by the Scottish Chaucerians |
| exhibit model | Models who host conventions and other promotion assignments. |
| gnomic present | a present tense used for generic statements that claim general validity. |
| meditation | A contemplation of some physical object as a way of reflecting upon some larger truth, often (but not necessarily) a spiritual one |
| postcolonialism | approaches to literary criticism influenced by postcolonial theories which investigates, for example, aspects of national identities, hybrid cultures, the significance of indigenous cultures, etc. |
| loose sentence | A loose sentence is a type of sentence in which the main idea (independent clause) comes first, followed by dependent grammatical units such as phrases and clauses |
| fly-rail | A rail on the fly floor to which the lines used for flying scenery are tied to pins or cleats |
| syntax | Word order and sentence structure. |
| three unities | in the 16th and 17th centuries, critics of the drama in Italy and France added to Aristotle's ‘unity of action’ two other unities, to constitute one of the rules of drama known as ‘the three unities’; on the assumption that the achievement of an illusion of reality in the audience of a stage play (verisimilitude) requires that the action represented by a play approximate the actual conditions of the staging of the play, they imposed the ‘unity of place’ (that the action represented be limited to a single location) and the requirement of the ‘unity of time’ (that the time represented be limited to the two or three hours it takes to act the play, or at most to a single day of either 12 or 24 hours). |
| noun | A noun is a part of speech (or word class) used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action. |
| valorization | In literary criticism, the privileging of one key aspect of a literary text or one particular process as the focus of literary analysis |
| matrix clause | In linguistics (and in generative grammar in particular), a matrix clause is a clause that contains a subordinate clause. |
| argument | In logic, an argument is a set of one or more meaningful declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the premises along with another meaningful declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the conclusion |
| paradox | A statement that seems to contradict itself, but, in fact, reveals some element of truth |
| morpheme | A morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit (a word or a word element) that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. |
| couplet | Two lines--the second line immediately following the first--of the same metrical length that end in a rhyme to form a complete unit |
| analytic plays | plays which start in ultimas res. |
| pratfall | A stunt fall designed for comic effect. |
| periphrasis | The substitution of an elaborate phrase in place of a simple word or expression, as "fragrant beverage drawn from China's herb" for tea |
| onomatope | An onomatope is a word that imitates the sound it denotes: an onomatopoeic word. |
| grease-paint | Term for theatrical make-up with an oil or "grease" base. |
| organization | (You might object that he includes the word rhythmic in his definition, but remember that he’s just defined “rhythm in poetry” not as recurring or regular but as temporal. |
| end-stop line | a line that ends with a natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation |
| denotation | The minimal, strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary, disregarding any historical or emotional connotation |
| buskin | A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or cloth which laces closed, but is open across the toes |
| xanaduism | Research to discover the sources that have contributed to a work of art. |
| gnomic poetry | Gnomic poetry consists of sententious maxims put into verse to aid the memory |
| tetrameter | A line of poetry that has four metrical feet. |
| round character | see character |
| diffusion material | Any reflecting or transmitting media for which the reflected or transmitted light is distributed uniformly. |
| oxymoron | An expression impossible in fact but not necessarily self-contradictory, such as John Milton's description of Hell as "darkness visible" in Book I of Paradise Lost. |
| image/imagery | Words and phrases that create vivid sensory experiences for the reader |
| idyll | Either a pastoral poem about shepherds or an epyllion, a brief epic that depicts a heroic episode |
| right-to-work-states | States which do not honor various union provisions. |
| flashback | When the action of a story is interrupted by a scene from the past. |
| hyperbole | A figure of speech indicating overstatement or exaggeration. |
| moral | a rule of conduct or a maxim for living (that is, a statement about how one should live or behave) communicated in a literary work |
| rummies | drunkards |
| pentameter | Pentameter may refer to: |
| quarter turn | To turn 90 degrees. |
| link | Chaucer scholars use the word "link" or "linking passage" to refer to the material connecting the individual tales in the Canterbury Tales to the surrounding stories |
| plot summary | a brief recounting of the principal action of a work of fiction, drama, or narrative poetry, usually in the same order in which the action is recounted in the original work rather than in chronological order. |
| morphology | Morphology is the branch of linguistics (and one of the major components of grammar) that studies word structures, especially in terms of morphemes. |
| demonstrator | A model who demonstrates a product in a trade show, convention or store. |
| anchor | Secure a set piece to the stage floor. |
| paranomasia | The technical Greek term for what English-speakers commonly refer to as a "pun." See extended discussion under pun, below. |
| heptameter | seven feet in a line |
| modern period | literary period from 1914 onwards |
| anacreontic verse | Imitations of the 6th-century B.C |
| enjambment | in poetry, when one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning |
| nominal | (1) Relating to nouns |
| foot | Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem |
| pathos | A scene or passage in a work evoking pity, sorrow, or compassion in the audience or reader, such as the poignant summation of the old man's grief in Wordsworth's Michael: |
| boards | The stage |
| figurative language | The nonstandard, as opposed to literal, use of language composed of figures of speech. |
| near cyc | A cyclorama light placed close to the cyclorama, generally less than 8’. |
| verisimilitude | Verisimilitude, with the meaning Ëof being true or realË is a likeness or resemblance of the truth, reality or a fact's probability |
| ternary meter | A meter consisting of three syllables per foot, as in dactylic or anapestic meters |
| deputy | Works in conjunction with the Stage Manager as the elected company member responsible for facilitating communication between Equity and the rest of the company. |
| light ending | Light ending may refer to: |
| campaign | plan |
| slant rhyme | see inexact-rhyme. |
| cycle | see sequence |
| comedy | A performance primarily meant to amuse. |
| chiasmus | from the shape of the Greek letter ‘chi’ (X); sequence of two phrases or clauses which are parallel in syntax but reverse the order of the corresponding words (a-b, b-a). |
| pastiche | An artistic effort that imitates or caricatures the work of another artist. |
| digital display | See alphanumeric display, |
| publicist | One who handles the public relations. |
| inference | Inference is the act of drawing a conclusion by deductive reasoning from given facts |
| emblem | An emblem is a pictorial image, abstract or representational, that epitomizes a concept â e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory â or that represents a person, such as a king or saint. |
| chanson de geste | An epic poem of the 11th and 14th century, written in Old French, which details the exploits of a historical or legendary figure, especially Charlemagne. |
| feet | See foot. |
| chain rhyme | Also called interlocking rhyme, a rhyme scheme in which a rhyme in a line of one stanza is used as a link to a rhyme in the next stanza, as in the aba bcb cdc, etc |
| end-stopped | A verse line ending at a grammatical boundary or break, such as a dash, a closing parenthesis, or punctuation such as a colon, a semi-colon, or a period |
| nonfinite verb | A nonfinite verb is a form of the verb that does not show a distinction in tense and cannot stand alone as the main verb in a sentence. |
| bachic meter | Poetry in which each foot is a three-syllable foot consisting of three heavy stresses |
| bombast | Hyperbolic or wildly exaggerating speech, so-called after a kind of cotton stuffing. |
| polysyndeton | the unusual repetition of the same conjunction (opposite of asyndeton) in order to join words, phrases or sentences. |
| consonance | The close repetition of the same end consonants of stressed syllables with differing vowel sounds, such as boat and night, or the words drunk and milk in the final line of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." |
| shaped verse | see concrete poetry |
| mixed metaphor | Occurs when two very dissimilar elements are connected, achieving a strange effect because the literal definitions of the elements are too unrelated to each other or because the resulting comparison is false, unlikely, or nonsensical. |
| film stock | Medium on which photographic images are recorded. |
| graveyard school | 18th-century poets such as Thomas Gray, Robert Blair, and Edward Young who penned gloomy poems on death. |
| negative particle | In English grammar, a negative particle is the word "not" (or its reduced form, "-nt") used to indicate negation, denial, refusal, or prohibition. |
| euphony | A pleasing harmony of sounds. |
| fairy tale | A story written for, or told to, children that includes elements of magic and magical folk such as fairies, elves, or goblins |
| broadside ballads | Poems printed on one side of a single sheet during the Renaissance period. |
| stress | The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables |
| general setting | see setting |
| didactic poetry | Poetry which is clearly intended for the purpose of instruction -- to impart theoretical, moral, or practical knowledge, or to explain the principles of some art or science, as Virgil's Georgics, or Pope's An Essay on Criticism. |
| epistrophe | Successive phrases, lines, or clauses that repeat the same word or words at their ends. |
| amateur | Not professional. |
| orientational metaphor | An orientational metaphor is a figurative comparison that involves spatial orientation. |
| segue | Transition from one shot to another. |
| iambic pentameter | The most common verse line in English poetry |
| deconstruction | The approach whereby any text is unfolded and meticulously investigated for its meaning, to the point where the base of the text is exposed as unstable |
| internal conflict | In literature, internal conflict is the struggle occurring within a character's mind |
| poem | Any composition that could be said to be poetry or verse. |
| tribrach | Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, short, and short syllables / ~ ~ ~ /. |
| deictic | Words that point to particulars, as names and pronouns do for individual places and persons (such as Edwin Arlington Robinson's "Miniver Cheevy" and "Richard Cory"), and demonstrative-adjective-noun combinations (such as Benjamin Franklin King's "Here's that ten dollars that I owe" in "If I Should Die To-night") do for things. |
| vital statistics | Personal, physical traits such as date of birth, hair and eye color, body measurements. |
| slang | Informal diction or the use of vocabulary considered inconsistent with the preferred formal wording common among the educated or elite in a culture |
| flag | To wave an object or a hand in front of an instrument to determine its coverage area. |
| deconstructionism | an approach to literature which suggests that literary works do not yield fixed, single meaning, because language can never say exactly what we intend it to mean |
| finale | The sequence which ends each act. |
| denotation | Dictionary definition of a word. |
| animation | Creating the illusion of motion by filming individual frames; each frame presents a small increment in the action |
| folktale | see tale |