| Beast tales | probably the favorite folktales of young children are beast tales, in which animals act and talk like human beings.
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| Cross-cultural study | similar folktales from different cultures can be compared and contrasted in a cross-cultural study.
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| Cumulative tales | folktales characterized by the increasing repetition of the details building up to a quick climax.
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| Dialect | a variation on a language, usually shared by the people of a particular geographic area.
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| Epic | a long narrative or a cycle of stories clustering around the actions of a single hero. Epics grew out of myths or along with them, since the gods still intervene in earlier epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Gradually, the center of action shifted from the gods to human heroes, so that in tales like Robin Hood the focus is completely on the daring adventures of the man himself.
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| Fable | brief, didactic tales in which animals, or occasionally the elements, speak as human beings.
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| Flat dimensions | characters in folktales are shown in flat dimensions, symbolic of the completely good or entirely evil. Character development is seldom depicted.
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| Folklore | the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories associated with a culture or a geographic region.
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| Indigenous | characteristic of a particular region or country.
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| Journey-novel | a tale in which the hero or heroine sets forth on a journey, often helps the poor on the way, frequently receives magical power, overcomes obstacles, and returns to safety.
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| Literary folktale | a story that is written in a folktale style but originated in an author's imagination.
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| Monogenesis | the theory that all peoples originated from a common culture.
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| Motifs | folklorists analyze folktales according to motifs or patterns, numbering each tale and labeling its episodes. Motif has been defined as the smallest part of a tale that can exist independently.
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| Myth | a narrative that tells of origins, explains natural or social phenomena, or suggests the destiny of humans through the interaction of people and supernatural beings.
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| Mythology | a group of myths of a particular culture.
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| Oral tradition | the age-old tradition of storytelling.
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| Patterns | recurring themes.
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| Polygenesis | multiple origins.
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| Pourquoi stories | stories that explain how or why something is the way it is.
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| Simplification of text | Wanda Gág described her method of simplification in adapting folktales for children: "By simplification I mean: (a) freeing hybrid stories of confusing passages; (b) using repetition for clarity where a mature style does not include it; (c) employing actual dialogue to sustain or revive interest in places where the narrative is too condensed for children. However, I do not mean writing in words of one or two syllables. True, the careless use of large words is confusing to children; but long, even unfamiliar words are relished and easily absorbed by them, provided they have enough color and sound value" (Wanda Gág, Tales from Grimm, New York: Coward-McCann, 1936, p. ix).
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| Tall tale | exaggerated stories about superhuman characters and phenomenal deeds.
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| Theory of diffusion | the origin of the myths has fascinated and puzzled folklorists, anthropologists, and psychologists. How, they wonder, can we account for the similarities among these stories that grew out of ancient cultures widely separated from each other? In trying to explain this phenomenon, one group of early mythologists proposed the notion of monogenesis, or inheritance from a single culture. The Grimm brothers, who were among the first nineteenth-century scholars of folklore, theorized that all folktales originated from one prehistoric group called Aryans, later identified as Indo-Europeans by modern linguists. As this group migrated to other countries, the scholars reasoned, they took their folklore with them; such reasoning led scholars to the theory of diffusion.
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| Transformations | a common motif in folktales; a character or key object in the story is magically changed into something else.
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| Tricksters | both animals and people trick, fool, or cheat their friends and neighbors in folk literature; these characters are known as tricksters.
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| Variant | a different version of a common story; each variant has basically the same story or plot as another; it might have different characters and a different setting, or it might use different motifs.
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| Wonder tales | tales about magic and the supernatural.
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