Some Poetic Terms
Simile (SIH-muh-lee): a comparison between two or more things using the words like or as.
example: "I move fast like a cheetah on the Serengeti."
Metaphor (MET-uh-for): a comparison between two or more things that doesn't use the words like or as.
example: "You are an ant, while I'm the lion."
Alliteration (uh-LIT-er-AY-shuhn): a phrase with a string of words all beginning with the same sound.
example: "Five freaky females finding sales at retail."
Hyperbole (hie-PER-buh-lee): an exaggeration.
example: "I fought a million rappers in an afternoon in June."
Personification, (per-son-if-ih-KAY-shon): giving an animal or object human-like characteristics.
example: "Alright, the sky misses the sun at night."
Symbol (SIM-bull): something that stands for something else (often something more abstract).
example: In Tupac Shakur's song Me and My Girlfriend, the "girflfriend" referenced is actually his gun.
Assonance (ASS-uh-nince): the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyme.
example: "Hear the mellow wedding bells." - Edgar Allen Poe"
Onomatopoeia (ON-uh-maht-uh-PEE-uh): a word that imitates the sound it is describing.
example: "Out of reach, I pull out with a screech."
Imagery (IM-aj-ree): a very general term that encompasses nearly any description of something that conjures an image, sound, taste, smell or feeling to mind. In other words a literal or concrete representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can be known by one or more senses.
example: "Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells" - T.S. Eliot