Alliteration

Alliteration

Alliteration is a figure of speech and a stylistic literary device which is identified by the repeated sound of the first or second letter in a series of words, or the repetition of the same letter sounds in stressed syllables of a phrase. "Alliteration" is from the Latin word littera, meaning "letter of the alphabet"; it was first coined in a Latin dialogue by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano in the 15th century.

Alliteration narrowly refers to the repetition of a letter in any syllables that, according to the poem's meter, are stressed, as in James Thomson's verse "Come…dragging the lazy languid Line along". Another example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers".

Consonance is a broader literary device identified by the repetition of consonant sounds at any point in a word (e.g. coming home, hot foot). Alliteration is a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound is in the stressed syllable. Alliteration may also refer to the use of different but similar consonants, such as alliterating z with s, as does the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or as Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poets would alliterate hard/fricative g with soft g (the latter exemplified in some courses as the letter yogh – ȝ – pronounced like the y in yarrow or the j in Jotunheim); this is known as license.