novella
/noʊˈvɛɫə/
nouna work of fiction with an intermediate length, which could be considered a short novel
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Examples
1. So Delany's novella fits comfortably into their repertoire.
2. While the film goes in a decidedly dark direction, King's novella is much more ambiguous.
3. That's what the internet's for, Novella.
4. It's like a little novella.
5. And this is a short novella.
epic
/ˈɛpɪk/
nouna long poem in narrative form giving an account of the extraordinary deeds and adventures of a nation's heroes or legends
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Examples
1. My mom is epic!
2. That little drive was epic.
3. That humor was epic.
4. That math class was epic!
5. The search was epic.
chronicle
/ˈkɹɑnɪkəɫ/
nouna historical account of events presented in chronological order
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Examples
1. The novel chronicles the fortunes and misfortunes of the Buendía family over seven generations.
2. The film chronicled Arnold’s victory in the 1975 Mr. Olympia over Lou Ferrigno - the future Incredible Hulk.
3. The show chronicles the march to Danny's murder nonlinearly.
4. Our new exhibit upstairs in the O'Brien Gallery chronicles the events of the crisis through original documents from the National Archives and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
5. The series chronicled their everyday life as husband and wife.
ode
/ˈoʊd/
nouna lyric poem, written in varied or irregular metrical form, for a particular object, person, or concept
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Examples
1. Redout Space Assault is an ode to games like X-Wing, TIE Fighter, or Star Fox.
2. It was my ode to the beach bum pack Michael :
3. This to me is like the ode to the LA street dog.
4. Everything is an ode to the circular nature of a water tower.
5. It's like an ode to my first trip to Africa.
parody
/ˈpɛɹədi/
nouna piece of writing, music, etc. that imitates the style of someone else in a humorous way
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Examples
1. Courts often hold that parody as a transformative fair use.
2. Parody music copies existing musical ideas, lyrics, or style of a certain artist or genre.
3. His parodies capture the essence of the original work down to the finest detail.
4. -They wrote parody songs.
5. He's parodying the sport of ultra-marathon running.
fable
/ˈfeɪbəɫ/
nouna short story on morality with animal characters
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Examples
1. Local fables tell about ships sucked down to Davy Jones' Locker by Old Sow.
2. It's like the frog and the scorpion fable.
3. Usually these stories are called fables.
4. Usually these stories are called fables.
5. So, the fable, here, is the 1919 eclipse expedition.
parable
/ˈpɛɹəbəɫ/
nouna short fictitious story with a moral or spiritual lesson, especially one told by Jesus Christ in the Gospels
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Examples
1. The second novel, Parable of the Talents, takes place five years after the end the previous novel.
2. Chapter 13 in Matthew is all parables.
3. So here was a case com- parable with that of a railroad coach open on all sides.
4. This is in the packet after the parables.
5. So, this says parable. -
haiku
/ˈhaɪku/
nouna Japanese poem with three unrhymed lines that have five, seven and five syllables each
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Examples
1. Here’s a haiku: Give, through Patreon Job security for us.
2. So Haiku was born, yay!
3. - I'll start with a haiku.
4. Take this haiku by the 18th-century Japanese poet Issa.
5. It looks like as if the CIA did haiku.
epigram
/ˈɛpəˌɡɹæm/
nouna short poem or phrase that expresses a single thought satirically, often ending in a clever or humorous way
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Examples
1. And every time he speaks, it's an epigram.
2. He offers them these portentous sayings, like this last little epigram about the tavern and the road thereto, and he uses this archaic language.
3. And if you don't like taking your epigrams from a philosopher, try a scientist.
4. In ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated.
5. And such was the origin of Sir Roger's famous epigram.
saga
/ˈsɑɡə/
nouna long story of heroic actions and bravery in old Norse or Icelandic in the Middle Ages, or a modern narrative resembling such a narrative
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Examples
1. The saga continues in today's edition of #SMACKYOLIP.
2. Thus, the saga continues.
3. The saga continues Wu-Tang
4. - Another pizza saga continues.
5. Okay, the saga continues.
epigraph
/ˈɛpɪɡɹˌæf/
nouna short quotation or phrase that is written at the beginning of a book or any chapter of it, suggesting the theme
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Examples
1. It's an epigraph.
2. The epigraphs to the novel suggest, also, the futility of a moral discourse.
3. Here's two epigraphs.
4. So here's my epigraph.
5. So, remember those epigraphs about the ancient evidence of scalping.
limerick
/ˈɫɪmɝɪk/
nouna humorous poem of five anapestic lines with a rhyme scheme of aabba
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Examples
1. This is Ireland, county Limerick.
2. His mother was sort of a Tennessee Williams character of fallen gentry from County Claire, and his father in the way of such tales, was a ne'er do well from Limerick.
3. He's sent us a big page of limericks.
4. Otherwise, the largest cities after Dublin are Cork and Limerick with the largest airports being Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports.
5. Yeah, "he knows so many limericks."
lyricism
/ˈɫɪɹɪˌsɪzəm/
nounthe creative and imaginative expression of powerful feelings in art, poetry, music, etc.
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Examples
1. Leviathan and the films of the Sensory Ethnography Lab also embrace a raw lyricism of sound and image that recalls the longer tradition of lyrical documentaries that has its deeper roots here at Harvard and the films of past great filmmakers who taught here.
2. And it also led me to connect with my Wu-Tang brothers, other MCs who also was hungry for the raw style of hip-hop, the style of hip-hop that was really based in lyricism, and MC battles, and challenges.
3. poetry is like the pure, distilled form of lyricism, and writing poems is like doing isolation training at the gym, which I assume is a thing people do at gyms.
4. Pound wants to get the Romanticism and lyricism of the poem out of it in certain ways.
5. Eliot resists that, and there are ways in which these two men working together and against each other to create the poem enact some of the poem's own struggle with lyricism and with Romanticism and help us to see that struggle as part of what goes into the creation of the poem itself.
prose
/ˈpɹoʊz/
nounspoken or written language in its usual form, in contrast to poetry
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Examples
1. Good people can write bad prose.
2. So classic prose is literally a matter of life and death.
3. Prose uses normal sentences and paragraphs.
4. His background kind of shines through his prose.
5. So if prose scares, poetry must haunt.
oeuvre
/ˈɝv/, /ˈuvɹə/
nounthe collection of artistic or literary works produced by a particular painter, author, etc.
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Examples
1. But there are some movies in the actor's oeuvre that only hardcore stans of Statham are likely to have seen.
2. Next in Foucault's oeuvre came: "Discipline and Punish."
3. And here is yet another book in judge's oeuvre on that time in Russian history.
4. Which is my second favorite line in the entire oeuvre of Alfred Kinsey.
5. That completes my oeuvre.
motif
/moʊˈtif/
nouna subject, idea, or phrase that is repeatedly used in a literary work or musical composition
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Examples
1. With the advent of the romantic movement, fantasy and folklore themes became common motifs.
2. Also, her flag ruins the otherwise consistent design motif.
3. Here, a whimsical motif looks like a custom design.
4. The motifs, the alternative choices they might have made.
5. Unsurprisingly, music is a motif throughout Cadence of Hyrule.
characterization
/ˌkɛɹəktɝɪˈzeɪʃən/
nounthe way in which characters in a movie, book, etc. are created and represented by a writer
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Examples
1. The issue of characterization is hugely, hugely, hugely significant.
2. I agree with Martha's characterization.
3. We never had a characterization of this river.
4. That characterization, in my view, is even more charitable.
5. I have a characterization.
antagonist
/ænˈtæɡənəst/
nounsomeone who strongly opposes another person or thing
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Examples
1. The antagonist is using the Da Vinci virus.
2. This character is essentially her own antagonist.
3. Basically infectious agents are antagonists of Type-1 diabetes in model mice.
4. suddenly the parent is their antagonists.
5. With new allies comes new antagonists.
protagonist
/pɹoʊˈtæɡənəst/
nounthe main character in a movie, novel, TV show, etc.
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Examples
1. Today’s protagonist is universally recognised as one of the greatest science fiction writers in the history of literature.
2. Today’s protagonist was an Olympics-level horse rider, a ladies’ man, a cavalry officer of three wars, a guerrilla fighter, and a secret agent.
3. Today’s protagonist is one of them.
4. And the protagonist, the key person in the case, again, has to make a decision with some uncertain information.
5. The protagonist is no hero by conventional literary standards.
to abridge
/əˈbɹɪdʒ/
verbto make a book, play, etc. short by omitting the details and including the main parts
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Examples
1. And the community in question seems to embrace something near socialism: abridging the superfluous for others' necessities.
2. It has to do with the dynamics of hopes abridged.
3. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
4. And third, whether that condition abridges anybody's constitutional rights.
5. And I think that condition might well abridge constitutional right.
to depict
/dɪˈpɪkt/
verbto describe or portray someone or something in words
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Examples
1. The second photograph depicts a more clear image of Slender Man.
2. The cover depicts a moment from the Newark Uprising in 1967.
3. Media coverage depicted party members as a caricature of Black militancy.
4. Fiction depicts many different types.
5. So the stories depict local tribal skirmishes, rather than confrontations between nations.
addendum
/əˈdɛndəm/
nouna section of additional material that is usually added at the end of a book
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Examples
1. Maybe as a little addendum, I know you guys have been working on a new algorithm, again in the spirit of variation in quantum algorithms.
2. But then the next day, they added the addendum that she was in labor while walking the runway.
3. But also an addendum: don't break the law.
4. We have recorded a podcast on the early structure and administration of the Ottoman empire as an addendum to this video and you can listen to it via the link in the description or the pinned comment.
5. A waiver is a contract or an addendum to a contract.
foreword
/ˈfɔɹˌwɝd/
nouna short introductory section at the beginning of a book, usually written by someone other than the author
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Examples
1. Mike Judge, my guy, who wrote the foreword on this book.
2. Alice B. Toklas wrote the foreword.
3. The foreword in your book is written by the iconic Maya Rudolph, which is super, super cool.
4. Cass wrote the foreword to our volume, and even though Cass was involved with our book, we didn't get a cute little elephants on our cover, the '70s kitchen colors on our cover over here.
5. So the foreword was written by Ronald Suny.
afterword
/ˈæftɚwˌɜːd/
nouna part at the end of a book including some final words that may not be written by the author
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Examples
1. But talk about the afterword to your book.
2. John Lewis wrote an afterword for the book.
3. She writes the afterword in 1993.
4. Afterwords, my mom was like, "Yeah, that makes sense."
5. At least the melody afterwords.
stanza
/ˈstænzə/
nouna series of lines in a poem, usually with recurring rhyme scheme and meter
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Examples
1. And a group of lines together in a paragraph is called a stanza.
2. There's that last stanza.
3. "Ca-stanza," something like that, it gets in your head, sticks there.
4. Look at the last stanza.
5. Look at stanza sixteen.
verse
/ˈvɝs/
nouna set of words that usually have a rhythmic pattern
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Examples
1. okay all right take verses
2. Now verse 10 is awesome.
3. Here's verse 23.
4. Then we have verse again.
5. - Versed.
sonnet
/ˈsɑnɪt/
nouna verse of Italian origin that has 14 lines, usually in an iambic pentameter and a prescribed rhyme scheme
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Examples
1. Basically, Sonnet 18 is one big extended metaphor.
2. - Write me a sonnet.
3. These sonnets about the book, in praise of the book, are like today's blurbs.
4. like, take the sonnet.
5. Petrarchan sonnets have a somewhat more involved form.
gripping
/ˈɡɹɪpɪŋ/
adjectiveexciting and intriguing in a way that attracts someone's attention
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Examples
1. Okay, I get it, the movie is absolutely gripping.
2. It was so gripping because it was unmediated.
3. And it's just so gripping because of that.
4. Their contoured shape is designed for easy gripping.
5. - Sorkin writes overwhelmingly human intelligent gripping dialogue.
concise
/kənˈsaɪs/
adjectivegiving a lot of information briefly and clearly
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Examples
1. -Cunt is so concise.
2. The book is more concise.
3. Concise is king, baby.
4. Number 9, Be Concise.
5. So be concise.
canonical
/kəˈnɑnəkəɫ/
adjective(of an author or literary work) accepted as highly acclaimed authors or pieces of literature, which are collectively referred to as the literary canon
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Examples
1. What's a canonical critic of mine?
2. He has no canonical species.
3. He has no canonical age.
4. These four pieces of information are not purely canonical information.
5. We have two canonical texts in the development of the Western consciousness of itself as the West.
flowery
/ˈfɫaʊɝi/
adjective(of writing or speech) full of literary or complicated words and phrases
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Examples
1. Put aside the flowery language.
2. She hated flowery sentences.
3. - I like flowery things.
4. You got flowery violet, licorice.
5. Don’t be flowery, Jacob!
mannered
/ˈmænɝd/
adjectivebehaving in an artificial way that is too formal, trying to impress others
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Examples
1. He was brutish, ill-mannered, barely literate, and swore like a sailor.
2. Sofie was uncouth, uneducated and ill mannered.
3. Charles Darwin, the mild mannered son of a physician, was once described as the most dangerous man in England.
4. And little Wolf Blitzer was very well mannered.
5. But in a film I didn't want it to feel mannered in that way.
raunchy
/ˈɹɔntʃi/
adjectivesexually explicit or morally obscene
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Examples
1. - Ooh, this one is raunchy!
2. What about your show is raunchy?
3. Cause my stuffs raunchy, you know? -
4. Raunchy cakes Birthdays in the Bryan household can get a little crude.
5. Oh, it's raunchy.
highbrow
/ˈhaɪˌbɹaʊ/
adjectivescholarly and highly interested in cultural or artistic matters
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Examples
1. Not highbrow stuff.
2. You know, sometimes the material on the film is highbrow.
3. Plan a highbrow date, like a night at the opera or a visit to a museum.
4. And then I'm using my Highbrow eyebrow kit, which is a stencil and a brush.
5. Is this the most highbrow sandwich?
sequel
/ˈsikwəɫ/
nouna book, movie, play, etc. that continues and extends the story of an earlier one
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Examples
1. And just as with the Final Destination movies, the sequels have pretty much the same plot, just some new actors.
2. Sequel's not out yet.
3. Sequels work now.
4. And Sequel truly is a real car.
5. Free Radical Design, creator of TimeSplitters, made two sequels.
codex
/kˈoʊdɛks/
nounan ancient book, written by hand, especially of scriptures, classics, etc.
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Examples
1. The codices, they were fascinating.
2. Codex cries into her web-cam.
3. So the triumph of the codex is roughly 400 AD to 2010.
4. What is a codex?
5. Basically this goes to the WordPress codex.
ghostwriter
/ɡˈoʊstɹaɪɾɚ/
nounan author whose work is published under someone else's name
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Examples
1. Also, that rabbit over there represents ArticleBunny, they do some of our ghostwriter articles.
2. He couldn’t stand this so, in 1882, he wrote his own account with the help of a ghostwriter to set the record straight.
3. Using a ghostwriter?
4. And finally, about 2 and 1/2 years ago-- I had a ghostwriter on first.
5. I am a ghostwriter for some of the biggest executives in big tech.
humorist
/ˈhjumɝəst/, /ˈhjumɝɪst/
nounsomeone who is known for writing or telling humorous stories or jokes about real people and events
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Examples
1. Porter already had an established writing career as a humorist, but after being arrested and jailed for embezzlement, picked up the pen again while in prison as O. Henry in a bid to conceal that he was publishing stories while incarcerated.
2. I could give an intro to Tolkien and his influence on the fantasy genre - but instead, I’ll quote beloved humorist and author, Terry Pratchett.
3. The best commencement speech I ever heard, or heard of was by Art Buchwald, the humorist.
4. So you've got humorists in all ages.
5. He's a wonderful humorist.
tragedian
/tɹædʒˈiːdiən/
nouna playwright who writes tragedies
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Examples
1. Because he felt that in the hands of a great tragedian, like Sophocles or Euripides, a story can be told in such a way that rather than calling the guy who has murdered his family a weirdo, or a nut case, or et cetera, you start to see something very, very frightening indeed.
2. I would not want to be known as a comedy star or only a tragedian.
3. The next event that we hear about in Athens that's relevant to our story is that in the year 493, the Athenian tragedian Phrynicus presents his play called, The Capture of Miletus.
4. If he had been slender and well made he would have been the first tragedian on any stage.
5. Milton invokes a tragedian, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Nazianzen who was able to finish a tragedy: Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a Tragedy, which he entitl'd Christ Suffering.
man of letters
/mˈæn ʌv lˈɛɾɚz/
nouna male literary author or scholar
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Examples
1. The charge of treason was dropped when he was found to be insane and hospitalized at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he would in a very peculiar way hold court, a great man of letters at the center of the American capitol, entertaining Elizabeth Bishop and other figures whom we will read.
2. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels.
3. Here's a brilliant man, a man of letters that says, "The only thing we can hope for is unyielding despair."
4. Is he an exemplary man of arms as opposed to a man of letters?
5. The topic in the speech also refers to utopian models of behavior, roles codified by the Renaissance: the courtier, the knight, the poet or man of letters, and in Spain, the saint were models of deportment.
satirist
/ˈsætɝəst/
nouna person who writes or uses satires in order to criticize or humor someone or something
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Examples
1. Jon: HERE TO HELP US MAKE SENSE OF ALL THAT IS EGYPT'S FOREMOST POLITICAL SATIRIST HOST OF THE NOW BANNED TELEVISION PROGRAM AL-BERNAMEG, BASSAM YOUSSEF.
2. So much of your comedy career can be defined as satire, as a satirist.
3. Satirists are trained in a certain kind of way.
4. I live in the US, I'm a journalist, or a comedian, or a satirist, anything you want me to be, really.
5. So it was always the satirist, like Juvenal or Martial, represented the audience, and he was going to make fun of the outsider, the person who didn't share that subject status.
