English Language Arts – Key Terms & Definitions

 5 W’s of newspapers - who, what, when, where, why

 Abbreviation – shortened form of a word
 Affix – group of letters and sounds added to a root word
 Alliteration – repetition of sound at the beginning of words
 Allusion – reference to a famous person or work
 Alphabetical – abcd order
 Analogy – point by point comparison of two things
 Antonyms – opposites
 Autobiography – life story written by self
 Ballad – short, simple story-telling poem meant to be a song
 Bandwagon – an appeal to a person's desire to be part of a group
 Bias – one-sided judgment held without looking at evidence
 Biography – someone's life story
 Cause and Effect – event (cause) that brings about an action (effect)
 Character – person in a literary work
 Chronological – order events happen in time
 Classifying – breaking large groups into smaller groups based on similar
characteristics
 Clichés – overused phrase or expression

1
 Climax – point of maximum interest
 Comedy – drama with a humorous tone
 Comparison – show similarities of two things
 Compound words – words formed by putting two or more words
together
 Conflict – struggle between opposing forces
 Connotation – Ideas and feelings associated with a word
 Consonants – non vowels
 Context clues – words or phrases that help a reader understand
meaning
 Contradictions – putting opposite words together in pairs (mildly fatal)
 Contrast – show differences of two things
 Couplet – rhymed pairs of lines in a poem
 Denotation – dictionary definition
 Description – a picture in words
 Dialogue – the words that characters speak aloud
 Drama – Form of literature performed before an audience
 Elegy – lyric poem about death
 Essay – short work of non-fiction that deals with a single subject
 Exposition – writing that informs
 Fable – brief story that teaches a life lesson on human nature
2
 Fact – a true statement
 Fantasy – story that takes place in an unreal, imaginary world
 Farce – exaggerated comedy with ridiculous situations
 Fiction – prose writing that tells an imaginary story
 Figurative language – helps reader picture ordinary things in new ways
 Flashback – begins story in the middle and goes back to retell to that
point
 Folktale – story passed down within a culture
 Foreshadowing – hints that suggest future events in a story
 Free verse – poetry without rhyme or rhythm
 Genre – a category of literature
 Grouping – see classifying
 Historical fiction – fiction set in the past
 Homographs – same spelling with different meaning (bow-bend, bow-
knot)
 Homophones – sound the same but with different meaning (too, to,
two)
 Hyperbole – use of exaggeration
 Hyphenated word – two words joined by a dash (-) to make a new word
 Idioms – expression has meaning different from the words (go to the
dogs)
3
 Imagery – words and phrases that appeal to reader's senses
 Inference – logical guess based on the evidence
 Inverted pyramid – most important details are at the beginning of the
story
 Irony – contrast between what is expected and what happens
 Lyric poem – short, musical poem that expresses thoughts and feelings
 Main idea – writer's principal message
 Making inferences – make a reasonable conclusion based in information
 Melodrama – exaggerated drama that relies on impossible events
 Metaphor – comparison of two things that have a quality in common
 Mood – feelings a work gives to a reader
 Moral of a story – lesson that a story teaches
 Mystery – story that depends on clues that solves a problem in the story
 Narration – telling a story
 Narrative – writing that tells a story
 Narrative biography – a person's life is written from birth to death
 Nonfiction – writing that tells about real people and places
 Novel – a work of fiction that is longer/more complex than a short story
 Onomatopoeia – words whose sound suggests meaning (buzz, sizzle)
 Opinion – what a person believes is true
 Oxymoron – use of opposite words together (jumbo shrimp)
4
 Paraphrasing – restate information in one's own words
 Personification – human qualities to non-human things
 Persuasion – tries to influence the reader in some way
 Plagiarizing – writing someone else's thoughts or words as if they were
your own
 Playwright – author of a play
 Plot – sequence of events that make up a story
 Poetry – highly condensed literary form
 Point of view – perspective of a story
 Predicting outcomes – guess what will happen next
 Prefix – affix added to beginning of a word
 Propaganda – spreading of ideas that help or damage another person
 Protagonist – central character of a story
 Rhyme scheme – patterns of rhyme in a poem
 Rhythm – patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables
 Science fiction – fiction based on scientific developments
 Script – written words of a drama
 Sequencing – the order in which something happens
 Setting – time and place
 Short story – brief work of fiction read in a single session
 Simile – comparison using like or as
5
 Sonnet – poem of 14 lines with a set rhyme scheme
 Spatial – describe by moving from one area to the next
 Suffix – added to end of a word to change the word meaning
 Summary – retelling a piece of writing in one's own words without
unimportant details
 Symbol – person or object that stands for something else
 Synonyms – similar in meaning
 Testimonial – first hand recommendation of a product
 Theme – message about life in a work
 Tone – attitude given by the author
 Topical biography – only key events in a subject's life are covered
 Tragedy – dramatic work that presents a downfall of a character
 Verse – a line of poetry