Some Common Writing Terminology

Illustration copyright Samantha Kickingbird

Acronym:  a word formed from the first letter or first few letters of each word in a phrase or title and sometimes pronounced as a word.  NASA is pronounced as a word and is the acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. FBI is pronounced by its letters and is an acronym for Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Alliteration: A group of words that all begin with the same sound. 
Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper pickles.
Antonym: a word with a meaning that is opposite to the meaning of another word. Love is the antonym of hate. Happy is the antonym of sad.
Euphemism: a milder word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
Spinning tales can be an euphemism for lying.
Homonyms: a word that is said or spelled the same way as another word but has a different meaning.
Write, right, and rite are homonyms.
Duck (noun) and duck (verb) are homonyms.
Metaphor: a word or phrase that is used as a symbol to make a direct comparison between two people, animals, things, places, or a combination of any two of these. A metaphor makes a stronger statement than a simile does by stating something “is” something else.
The king is a dragon today.
The raindrops were arrows.
Oxymoron: A phrase composed of two words with contradictory meanings.
Jumbo shrimp. Act naturally. Original copy.
Pun: A play on words that relies on a word’s having more than one meaning or sounding like another word.
A good pun has its own reword.
Horses are stable animals.
Simile: a figure of speech in which two un-similar things or people are compared by using “like” or “as” to connect the comparison.
The knight was as brave as a panther.
The dragon danced like a feather in the wind.
Synonyms: a word that has the same meaning as another word. Big, large, huge, and giant are synonyms.
Small, miniature, little, and tiny are synonyms.
Personification: a figure of speech in which a something non-human is given a human quality. The non-human objects are portrayed in such a way that we feel they have the ability to act like human beings.
The unicorn sang in triumph.
Flowers danced in the breeze.

Check out dragon books for children by author Diane Mae Robinson: https://www.amazon.com/Diane-Mae-Robinson/e/B007DKO8SK/

The Strange English Language

Illustration copyright @ Samantha Kickingbird

Some Fun Word Stuff

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.” 

There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.

No word in the English language rhymes with month,orange, silver, or purple.

The sentence: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet. 


Hetronyms are words spelled the same as another but having different sounds and different meanings, as lead (to conduct) and lead (a metal).


Homographs are words with the same written form as another but different meanings, whether pronounced the same way or not, as row (an argument) and row (paddle the oars) and row (a straight line).

       The dragon wound the cloth around the wound on his leg.

      He could still lead the knights if he could get the thick lead door opened.

     The king had to refuse the dumping of more refuse.

     The princess did not object to the shinny object the dragon brought her.

     The royal carpenter built the door to close to the window—it would not close.

     The royal chef had a tear in his apron and a tear in his eye.

     Upon arrival, the royal dove dove through the window.

Deserting his dessert in the desert was not in the plan.

     The soldiers got in a row as they tried to straighten the row while rowing.
      The kingdom’s gardener was summoned to produce lots of produce, or else.

     The bass tuba had an etching of a bass on it’s stem.

     The prince, even in his present state, was to present the present to the princess.

     The wind was too strong to wind the kite string.


Then we could look at the word “Up”–quite possibly the strangest word in that it is an adverb, preposition, adjective, noun, and verbs: used with object, used without an object, or used as an idiom. Here are all the mind-boggling definitions of “Up”; http://splashurl.com/o55kb47

Want to have some grammar fun? The Dragon Grammar Book, for middle grades and up. An Amazon.com Bestseller in Language Arts Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Grammar-Book-Dragons-Kingdom-ebook/dp/B078G1VKP2/

The Dragon Grammar Book: Grammar for Kids, Dragons, and the Whole Kingdom by [Robinson, Diane Mae]