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Superglossary - Literature Category: General > Literature Date & country: 11/12/2013, USA Words: 1716

New Comedy
The Greek comedy the developed circa 300 BCE, stressing romantic entanglements, wit, and unexpected

New England Short O
In linguistics, this term refers to 'the lax vowel used by some New Englanders in road and home corr

Niger-Kordefanian
A group of languages spoken in the southern part of Africa. This family of languages apparantly has

Nilo-Saharan
A group of languages spoken in the central sections of Africa. This family of languages apparantly h

Noble Savage
Typically, the depiction of Amerindians, indigenous African tribesmen, and Australian bushmen result

Nom De Guerre
Another term for a nom de plume or a pen name. See nom de plume or pen name. (French, 'name of war')

Nom De Plume
Another term for a pen name. The word indicates a fictitious name that a writer employs to conceal h

Non-Distinctive
In linguistics, any two sounds (often quite similar) that are not capable of signaling a difference

Non-Finite Form
In grammar, this category of verbs includes the infinitive and participle forms. Basically, a non-fi

Non-Rhotic
In linguistics, any dialect lacking an /r/. Some dialects of English are non-rhotic. Others only pro

Norman
An inhabitant of Normandy, a region along the northern coast of France. The word Norman comes from a

Norman Conquest
Loosely, another term for the Norman Invasion, though technically some historians prefer to differen

Norman Invasion
Not to be confused with D-Day during World War II, medieval historians use this title for a much ear

Normandy
The region along the northern coast of France. See Norman for more information.

North Germanic
The sub-branch of the Germanic languages that contains Swedish and Old Norse.

North Midland Dialect
A dialect of American English spoke in a strip of land just south of the Northern Dialect. This shou

Northern Dialect
A dialect of American English stretching through the northernmost sections of the United States.

Northumbrian
The Old English dialect spoken in the kingdom of Northumbria (i.e., north of the Umber river).

Nostos
The theme or motif of the homecoming--a return to one's family, community, or geographic origins aft

Nostratic
A hypothetical superfamily of languages that might embrace other large family language groups--inclu

Novel
In its broadest sense, a novel is any extended fictional prose narrative focusing on a few primary c

Novel Of Manners
A novel that describes in detail the customs, behaviors, habits, and expectations of a certain socia

Novella
An extended fictional prose narrative that is longer than a short story, but not quite as long as a

Nowell Codex
The common scholarly nickname for the medieval manuscript that contains Beowulf. The official design

Numerology
Number symbolism, especially the idea that certain numbers have sacred meanings. Classical Hebrew wr

Objective Form
A form of pronouns used as the objects of prepositions and verbs. Examples include the pronouns him,

Oblique Form
The various forms or cases of any word in a declined language except the nominative form or nominati

Occasional Poem
A poem written or recited to commemorate a specific event such as a wedding, an anniversary, a milit

Octave
Not to be confused with octavo, below, an octave is the first part of an Italian or Petrarchan sonne

Octavo
Not to be confused with octave, above, octavo is a term from the early production of paper and vellu

Ode
A long, often elaborate stanzaic poem of varying line lengths and sometimes intricate rhyme schemes

Oed
The standard abbreviation among scholars for The Oxford English Dictionary, a huge twenty+ volume se

Oedipal Complex
The late Victorian and early twentieth-century psychologist Freud argued that male children, jealous

Off Glide
In linguistics, the second-half of a diphthong sound.

Off Rhyme
In poetry, another term for inexact rhyme.

Ogam
The term comes from Old Irish, 'Oghma,' probably an eponym of Oghma the Irish god of invention. It r

Old Comedy
The Athenian comedies dating to 400-499 BCE, featuring invective, satire, ribald humor, and song and

Old English
Also known as Anglo-Saxon, Old English is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. It is a

Olfactory Imagery
Imagery dealing with scent. See imagery.

Ollamh
An ancient Irish storyteller. The ollamh profession flourished between the sixth and fifteenth centu

Omen
A miraculous sign, a natural disaster, or a disturbance in nature that reveals the will of the gods

Oneiromancy
The belief that dreams could predict the future, or the act of predicting the future by analyzing dr

Onomastic
Related to names. For instance, a character's name might contain an onomastic symbol--if that charac

Onomatopoeia
The use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect.

Open Poetic Form
A poem of variable length, one which can consist of as many lines as the poet wishes to write. Every

Open Syllable
Any syllable ending in a vowel, like the word tree.

Open System
A system that can be adjusted for new functions or purposes, and hence produce new and unpredicted r

Open-Air Theater
An amphitheater, especially the unroofed public playhouses in the suburbs of London. Shakespeare's G

Oral Formulaic
Having traits associated with works intended to be spoken aloud before an audience of listeners. Exa

Oral Transmission
The spreading or passing on of material by word of mouth. Before the development of writing and the

Orchestra
(1) In modern theaters, the ground-floor area on the first floor where the audience sits to watch th

Order Of The Garter
An elite order of knights first founded around 1347-1348 by King Edward III. The Knights of the Gart

Organic -E
An that is pronounced and serves a purpose in distinguishing declensions. In Old and Middle Engl

Organic Unity
An idea common to Romantic poetry and influential up through the time of the New Critics in the twen

Original Sin
A theological doctrine arguing that all humans at the moment of conception inherit collective respon

Orphan
In printing, an orphan is a single short line beginning a paragraph but separated from all the other

Orthoepy
In linguistics, the study of pronunciation as it relates to spelling. A linguist who specializes in

Orthography
(1) The linguistic term for a writing system that represents the sounds or words of a particular lan

Outlaw
An individual determined by a council vote to be an outlaw at a thing or an althing was considered o

Outside Speaker
The 'speaker' of a poem or story presented in third-person point of view, i.e., the imaginary voice

Ov Language
A language that tends to place the grammatical object before the verb in a sentence. Japanese is an

Overgeneralization
In linguistics, the introduction of a nonstandard or previously non-existent spelling or verb form w

Oxford English Dictionary
This fat, twelve+ volume work functions as an historical dictionary of English. It is generally cons

Oxymoron
Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Simple or joking examples

Paean
Among the earliest Greeks, the word paean signifies 'a dance and hymn with a specific rhythm which i

Palatal
In linguistics, any sound involving the hard palate--especially the tongue touching or moving toward

Palatal Dipthongization
A sound change in which either the ash or the /e/ sound in Old English words became a diphthong when

Palatalization
In linguistics, the process of making a sound more palatal--i.e., moving the blade of the tongue clo

Palatovelar
In linguistics, a sound that is either palatal or velar.

Palindrome
A word, sentence, or verse that reads the same way backward or foreward. Certain words in English na

Palinode
Singing again)

Panglossian
The word is an eponym based on the fictional Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire's satire, Candide. Dr. Pangl

Pantheon
(1) A pantheon is a collective term for all the gods believed to exist in a particular religious bel

Parable
Throwing beside or 'placing beside')

Paradigmatic Change
In linguistics, these are language changes brought about because a sound or a word was associated wi

Paradox
Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to r

Paragram
A sub-type of pun. See discussion under pun.

Paralanguage
The non-verbal features that accompany speech and help convey meaning. For example, facial expressio

Parallelism
When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length. For instance, 'Kin

Paranomasia
The technical Greek term for what English-speakers commonly refer to as a 'pun.' See extended discus

Paraphrase
A brief restatement in one's own words of all or part of a literary or critical work, as opposed to

Pararhyme
Wilfred Owen's term for a slant rhyme. An example appears in his poem, 'Strange Meeting,' in which O

Parataxis
Rhetorically juxtaposing two or more clauses or prepositions together in strings or with few or no c

Paratext
In Gérard Genette's work, Paratext

Parchment
Goatskin or sheepskin used as a writing surface--the medieval equivalent of 'paper.' A technical dis

Pardoner
An individual licensed by the medieval church to sell papal indulgences (i.e., 'pardons'), official

Pardons
Another term for papal indulgences. See discussion under pardoner.

Parodos
In Greek tragedy, the ceremonial entrance of the chorus. Usually the chorus at this time chants a ly

Parody
Beside, subsidiary, or mock song)

Parole
In Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of semiology, parole is the use of language--i.e., manifestations

Part
An actor's role in a play, the character the actor portrays or pretends to be. The term comes from R

Partible Succession
The opposite of primogeniture, partible succession is the practice in which all the children share e

Parts Of Speech
The traditional eight divisions or categories for words as described by the Latin grammarian Aelius

Passus
William Langland uses the term passus to refer to each numbered subdivision of his poem, The Vision

Pastoral
An artistic composition dealing with the life of shepherds or with a simple, rural existence. It usu

Pathos
In its rhetorical sense, pathos is a writer or speaker's attempt to inspire an emotional reaction in

Patristic Period
The time of the 'church fathers,' i.e., the time of the early Church and the Church's first theologi

Patrologia Latina
A famous (or perhaps infamous) scholarly collection of 228+ fat volumes of biblical and theological

Patronage
The act of giving financial or political support to an artist. A person who provides financial suppo

Peace-Weaver
In Anglo-Saxon culture, a woman who is married to a member of an enemy tribe to establish a peace-tr