Fable - Hysteron Proteron

A short narrative meant to teach a moral lesson.

An error in reasoning that renders an argument invalid.

A fallacy in which an argument is based on misleading, superficial, or implausible comparisons.

A fallacy of oversimplification that offers a limited number of options (usually two) when in reality more options are available.

An informal term in linguistics for pairs of words in two languages that look and/or sound the same but have different meanings.

A familiar essay is a short prose composition (a type of creative nonfiction) characterized by the personal quality of the writing and the distinctive voice or persona of the essayist.

Words and phrases created, used, and generally understood only by the members of a family.

In traditional grammar, faulty parallelism is a construction in which two or more parts of a sentence are equivalent in meaning but not parallel (or grammatically similar) in form.

In communication studies, the response of an audience to a message or activity.

A feghoot is an anecdote or short story that concludes with an elaborate pun.

The conditions that must be in place and the criteria that must be satisfied for a speech act to achieve its purpose.

Feminist rhetoric is the study and practice of feminist discourses in public and private life.

A type of semantic change in which a word gains additional meanings through metaphorical or metonymic associations.

Language in which figures of speech (such as metaphors, similes, and hyperbole) freely occur.

Figurative meaning refers to the metaphorical, idiomatic, or ironic sense of a word or expression, in contrast to its literal meaning.

The various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance.

A filler word is an apparently meaningless word, phrase, or sound that marks a pause or hesitation in speech.

A form of the verb that shows agreement with a subject and is marked for tense.

The use of "I," "me," "we" and other first-person pronouns to relate the thoughts, experiences, and observations of a narrator in a work of fiction or nonfiction.

First-person pronouns are pronouns that refer to the speaker or writer or to a group that includes the speaker or writer.

A prose composition that follows a prescribed format of an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph.

A shift in a narrative to an earlier event that interrupts the normal chronological development of a story.

A traditional term for an adverb that has the same form as its corresponding adjective.

A flotsam phrase is an expression that "just take[s] up space without adding to the meaning of a sentence."

In composition, a general term for the clear, smooth, and seemingly effortless use of language in writing or speech.

A verbal slanging match: a ritualized form of invective in which insults are exchanged.

Folk etymology is the change in the form of a word or phrase resulting from a mistaken assumption about its composition or meaning.

A reference, explanation, or comment placed below the main text on a printed page.

Definitions, examples, and discussions of foregrounding in literature, stylistics, and linguistics.

A simplified version of a language that is sometimes used by native speakers when addressing non-native speakers.

The application of linguistic research and methods to the law, including evaluation of written evidence and the language of legislation.

The presentation of details, characters, or incidents in a narrative in such a way that later events are prepared for (or "shadowed forth").

A formal essay is a short, relatively impersonal composition in prose.

A broad term for speech or writing marked by an impersonal, objective, and precise use of language.

A group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point but is grammatically incomplete.

A morpheme (or word element) that can stand alone as a word.

A discovery (or prewriting) strategy intended to encourage the development of ideas without concern for the conventional rules of grammar and usage.

See "iterative."

Any construction in which a word group that customarily follows the verb is placed at the beginning of a sentence.

See "conversion."

A word that expresses a grammatical relationship.

A sentence in which two independent clauses are run together (or "fused") without an appropriate conjunction or mark of punctuation between them.

A verb construction (made up of "will have been" plus a present participle) that points to an ongoing future activity which occurs before another activity.

A verb tense that expresses action completed by a specified time in the future.

A verb construction (made up of the verb phrase "will be" or "shall be" plus a present participle) that conveys a sense of ongoing action in the future.

A verb tense indicating action that has not yet begun.

The use of archaic words or expressions.

A construction in which part of a sentence is omitted rather than repeated.

A fallacy in which an inference is drawn on the assumption that a series of chance events will determine the outcome of a subsequent event.

In psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics, a sentence that is temporarily ambiguous or confusing because it contains a word group which is compatible with more than one structural analysis.

A grammatical classification which in English applies primarily to the third-person singular personal pronouns.

In sociolinguistics and other social sciences, gender refers to sexual identity in relation to culture and society.

See "broadening."

A discipline and/or methodology intended to improve the ways people interact with their environment and with one another, especially through training in the critical use of words and other symbols.

In linguistics, a grammar (or set of rules) that indicates the structure and interpretation of sentences which native speakers of a language accept as belonging to the language.

See "conceptual metaphor."

A composing method that aims to develop the syntactic fluency of students through controlled writing practice.

A legal term for generification: the historical process whereby a brand name or trademark is transformed through popular usage into a common noun.

A personal pronoun that includes both masculine and feminine, such as "they" in English.

The process of using specific brand names of products as names for the products in general.

The genitive is the case (or function) of an inflected form of a noun or pronoun showing ownership, measurement, association, or source.

A category of artistic composition, as in film or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content.

A verbal ending in "-ing" that functions in a sentence as a noun.

A word that has never occurred in actual usage but that appears in one or more dictionaries, usually because of a lexicographical or typographical error.

A glittering generality is a vague word or phrase used to evoke positive feelings rather than to convey information.

(1) The use of the English language as a common means of communication across cultures--a lingua franca. (2) A form of English used in texts intended for an international audience.

A simplified version of Anglo-American English used as a global lingua franca.

A glossary is an alphabetized list of specialized terms with their definitions.

In phonetics, a stop sound made by rapidly closing the vocal cords.

The use of a verb in the present tense to express a general truth without reference to time.

Inflated, jargon-cluttered prose that fails to communicate clearly.

Gongorism is a wordy and highly ornate style of writing, typically characterized by puns, paradoxes, obscure allusions, and archaic diction.

The semantic property of an adjective that identifies different levels or degrees of the quality it denotes.

A rhetorical term for a sentence construction in which the last word of one clause becomes the first of the next, through three or more clauses.

The quality of indeterminacy (or blurred boundaries) on a graduated scale connecting two linguistic elements.

The systematic study and description of a language.

A computer application that identifies possible usage errors or stylistic infelicities in a text.

A specialist in the grammar of one or more languages.

A class of units (such as noun and verb) or features (such as number and case) that share a common set of grammatical properties.

A term used in prescriptive grammar for an instance of faulty, unconventional, or controversial usage.

In linguistics, the conformity of a sentence to the rules defined by a specific grammar of a language.

In historical linguistics, the process by which (a) a lexical item or construction changes into one that serves a grammatical function, or (b) a grammatical item develops a new grammatical function.

The meaning that is conveyed by word order and other grammatical signals.

The substitution of one grammatical class or structure for another.

A pejorative term for a grammarian, especially one who is concerned with petty matters of usage.

In classical rhetoric, speech or writing that is characterized by a heightened emotional tone, imposing diction, and highly ornate figures of speech.

A letter of the alphabet or mark of punctuation.

In business writing and technical communication, visual representations used to support the text in a report, proposal, set of instructions, or similar document.

(1) The study of handwriting as a means of analyzing character. (2) A branch of linguistics that studies writing and print as systems of signs.

The series of typographical symbols (such as @#*&!) used in cartoons and comic strips to represent swear words.

The systemic change in the pronunciation of English vowels (in phonetic terms, the raising and fronting of the long, stressed monophthongs) that occurred in southern England during the late Middle English period

A statement of the relationship between certain consonants in Germanic languages and their originals in Indo-European.

The group genitive is a possessive construction in which "'s" appears at the end of a noun phrase whose final word is not its head or is not its only head.

A sound change involving the loss of a syllable when it is next to a phonetically identical (or similar) syllable.

A fallacy in which a conclusion is not logically justified by sufficient or unbiased evidence.

In a phrase, the word that determines the nature of the phrase--such as the noun in a noun phrase.

A noun phrase or clause positioned in front of a clause and followed by one or more pronouns that refer back to the noun phrase.

A brief descriptive word or phrase that introduces or summarizes a document or a section within a document.

The abbreviated style of newspaper headlines, a register characterized by short words, cliches, and ellipsis.

See "verbal hedge."

A verb that comes before the main verb in a sentence. Together the helping verb and the main verb form a verb phrase.

A figure of speech in which two words joined by the conjunction "and" express an idea that is more commonly expressed by an adjective and a noun.

Words with the same spelling but different pronunciations and meanings. See "homographs."

In rhetoric and composition studies, heuristic is a strategy or set of strategies for exploring topics, constructing arguments, and discovering solutions to problems.

An informal term in traditional grammar for needless nominalization: a noun-verb combination used in place of a single, more forceful verb.

Hierarchy is any ordering of units or levels on a scale of size, abstraction, or subordination.

A mix of Hindi (the official language of India) and English (an associate official language of India) that is spoken by upwards of 350 million people in urban areas of India.

The branch of linguistics concerned with the development of a language or of languages over time.

The use of a verb phrase in the present tense to refer to an event that took place in the past.

In linguistics, the alteration of a word in one language when used by speakers of another language.

Holistic grading is a method of evaluating a composition based on its overall quality.

A single word (such as "Thanks") that is used to express a complete, meaningful thought.

The language (or the variety of a language) that is most commonly spoken by the members of a family for everyday interactions at home.

The art of preaching; the rhetoric of the sermon.

Similar endings to words, phrases, or sentences.

Words that have the same spelling but differ in origin, meaning, and sometimes pronunciation.

Words that sound alike but have different meanings and/or spellings.

Two or more words (such as "knew" and "new") that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and sometimes spelling.

A word, title, or grammatical form that signals respect or social deference.

In rhetoric and logic, horismus is a brief definition, especially one that makes distinctions between related terms.

Speech or writing that urges or commands an audience to follow (or not follow) a particular course of action.

The specific usage and editing conventions followed by writers and editors to ensure stylistic consistency in a particular publication or series of publications

A word made up of elements (or morphemes) from different languages.

A figure of speech consisting of an exchange within a statement between (1) the epithets assigned to specific nouns (also known as a "transferred epithet"), or (2) activities associated with certain words or their complements.

A figure of speech that uses deviation from normal or logical word order to produce an effect; also, a figure in which language takes a sudden turn--usually an interruption.

A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect; an extravagant statement.

A pronunciation or grammatical construction produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage out of a desire to be correct.

A neurological phenomenon (usually associated with temporal lobe epilepsy) that is characterized by an uncontrollable urge to write.

A linguistic term for a word whose meaning includes the meanings of other words.

A short horizontal mark of punctuation ( - ) used between the parts of a compound word or name or between the syllables of a word when divided at the end of a line of text.

Hypocorism is a nickname, pet name, or term of endearment--often a shortened form of a word or name. Adjective: "hypocoristic."

Exaggerating the gestures or speech habits of another in order to mock him.

In linguistics, a specific term used to designate a member of a class.

Raising questions and answering them.

Hypotaxis is a rhetorical term for the arrangement of phrases or clauses in a dependent or subordinate relationship.

Hysteron proteron is a figure of speech in which the natural or conventional order of words, actions, or ideas is reversed.