AP LANG FIG LANG TERMS

Allusion

A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book or myth.

Allegory

The device of using character and/or story elements symbolically to represent an abstraction in addition to the literal meaning.

Conceit

A comparison which is unlikely, but very imaginative.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or personified abstraction.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole or the whole is used to represent a part.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which the name of one object is substituted for that of another closely associated to it.

Euphemism

A polite expression used to replace words or phrases considered to be harsh or impolite.

Malapropism

The use of an incorrect word in place of a similar sounding word that results in a funny expression.

Anachronism

an event or detail that occurs within a story that is inappropriate for the time period in which the story takes place

Aphorism

A terse (strong) statement of known authorship that expresses a general truth or moral principle....a memorable summation of the author's point. (If the author is unknown, it is usually considered a folk proverb.)

Epanalepsis

a figure of speech in which the beginning of a clause or sentence is repeated at the end of that same clause or sentence, with words intervening

zeugma

a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g., John and his license expired last week ) or to two others of which it semantically suits only one (e.g., with weeping eyes and hearts ).

Litotes

1. ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary (e.g., you won't be sorry, meaning you'll be glad ).

Chiasmus

a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form; e.g. ‘Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds

Assonance

in poetry, the repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible (e.g., penitence, reticence ).

consonance

a form of rhyme involving the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different. Consonance may be regarded as the counterpart to the vowel-sound repetition known as assonance

Asyndeton

the omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence

Polysyndeton

the use of repeated conjunctions between words or clauses in a sentence to emphasize what's being said. Comes from the Ancient Greek word polysyndetos, which means “bound together.”

Apposition

a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way.

Anastrophe

a figure of speech in which the normal word order of the subject, the verb, and the object is changed. Anastrophe is a hyponym of the antimetabole, where anastrophe only transposes one word in a sentence. For example, subject–verb–object might be changed to object–subject–verb

Antanaclasis

the repetition of a word within a phrase or sentence in which the second occurrence utilizes a different and sometimes contrary meaning from the first.

anaphora

a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis

repetition

an instance where a word or phrase is repeated to provide clarity and emphasis, highlighting deeper meanings in the text

parallelism

is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure

Schemes

types of figure of speech that relies on the structure of the sentence, unlike the trope, which plays with the meanings of words

Tropes

a rhetorical device in which MEANING is altered from the usual or expected