Glossary: Literary Terms to Know

These are terms that you are expected to know through all of your English courses at CHS. You will be tested on your ability to recall definitions of these terms, explain instances in the readings where the author used literary devices, and write passages from your own experiences using these devices.

Browse the glossary using this index

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Setting

The time and place of action of a story is its setting.

Simile

When a writer compares things using the words like or as, it is a simile.

EXAMPLES (from an online collection, Anonymous):

Comparisons using LIKE:	Comparisons using AS:
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.	He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.	Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

Symbols

A person, place, activity or object that stands for something beyond itself is a symbol.