Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms

Drawn from our extensive Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms, this collection provides a quick review of the basic terminology used in the study of traditional English grammar. For a more detailed examination of the word forms and sentence structures introduced here, click on any of the terms to visit a glossary page, where you will find numerous examples and expanded discussions.

You'll find many familiar names in our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms--names for the traditional parts of speech, logical fallacies, and figures of speech, for example. But even diehard language lovers may be surprised by some of the weird, witty, and wonderful items we've collected. Here are 20 of our favorite linguistic terms.

As noted in the first edition of There's a Name for It, you'll find many familiar words and expressions in our extensive Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms. But you'll also find some less familiar terms--playful words like "squish" and "gadzookery" alongside such obscurities as "iterative," "antonomasia," and "matrix." All provide glimpses into the witty and wonderful world of language.

Hobson-Jobsonism, lazy pronouns, burlesque metaphors, and garden-path sentences: you'll find definitions and examples of these and many more witty and wonderful language-related terms here in part three of There's a Name for It.

"Phantomnation" is a perfect example of a ghost word--a word that exists only in a dictionary and has never actually been used.

If you're in the mood to brush up on your grammar, this page is for you: brief definitions and examples of the two dozen most common grammatical terms.

These lists are intended to help you identify figures, tropes, and other rhetorical strategies and devices.

Though there are hundreds of figures of speech (many of them included in our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms), here we'll focus on just 20 of the most common figures.

There are hundreds of figures and tropes. And while we may not recognize their names, we use and hear many of these devices every day. So let's take a look at 20 uncommon words (most of them Latin or Greek) for some fairly common rhetorical strategies.

Monty Python's "Announcement for People Who Like Figures of Speech" not only identifies over 30 figurative devices but deftly and accurately illustrates most of them as well. To assist readers who may not be acquainted with such exotic figures as hypallage and zeugma, we have conscientiously annotated the Python team's disquisition with links to definitions and additional examples in our Glossary…

On these two pages you will find brief definitions of 101 grammatical, literary, and rhetorical terms that have appeared on the multiple-choice and essay portions of the AP English Language and Composition exam. For examples and more detailed explanations of the terms, follow the links to the expanded entries in our Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms.

This quiz should help you to understand and remember the terms and concepts introduced in our page on the Top 20 Figures of Speech.

In this review quiz, we have collected 35 of the best known slogans introduced by advertisers over the past century. Your job is to choose the one figure of speech that each slogan most clearly illustrates.

This quiz should help you to understand, distinguish, and remember many of the rhetorical terms in our glossary.

This review quiz should help you to remember and distinguish the names of some of the less well-known but still important figures of speech.

A list of works consulted for definitions of grammatical and rhetorical terms.

Copyediting is the work that an editor does to improve a manuscript and prepare it for publication. Here we reveal some of the jargon of the copyediting trade: 140 terms and abbreviations used by editors in their efforts to produce copy that is clear, correct, concise, consistent, and comprehensible.

The four glossaries listed here are among the very best grammar glossaries available on the web.