AP LIT: Vocab

Diction

Author’s choice of words

Bombast

Overly pompous language

Colloquial

Informal, region-specific language

Cliché

Overly used phrase

Didactic

Preachy and instructional language

Formal

Elevated speech free of slang

Slang

Informal language thats time specific

Syntax

Order of words in a sentence

Parallel structure

Repetition of sentence structure for emphasis

Rhetorical question

Question that doesnt need an answer

Juxtaposition

Two very different things placed close together for emphasis

Inverted

Swapping the subject and verb

Declarative

Statement

Interrogative

Asks a question

Imperative

Command

Exclamatory

Shows emotion, ends in exclamation point

Repetition

Words are repeated for emphasis

Scheme

Literary device that deals with syntax, letters, and sounds

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds

Ellipsis

Omit info using …

Parenthesis

Adding in info using ()

Trope

Literary devices dealing with anything other than the literal

Metaphor

Comparison that doesnt use like or as

Simile

Comparison that does use like or as

Synecdoche

When the part represents the whole, vice versa

Metonomy

Replace a noun with a closely related object

Personification

Giving nonhuman things human characteristics

Hyperbole

Extreme exaggeration

Litotes

Exaggerated understatement

Irony

Amusing contrast between expectation and reality

Verbal irony

Contrast between whats said and whats meant

Situational irony

Outcome is significantly different from the expectation

Dramatic irony

Audience has info that the characters lack

Onomatopoeia

Sound words

Oxymoron

Seeming self contradiction

Paradox

Seeming self contradiction with an aspect of truth behind it

Pun

Play on similar sounding words

Allusion

Reference to something well known

Apostrophe

Addressing something thats dead absent or imaginary as if it were present

Direct characterization

Character is described using adjectives

Indirect characterization

Characters personality is revealed using their actions or dialogue

Round character

Character with multiple defining characteristics and often conflict and contrast one another

Dynamic character

Experiences important inner change

Static character

Experiences little to no change

Protagonist

Main character

Antagonist

Works against the protagonist

Internal conflict

Struggle within a character

External conflict

Struggle between character and outside forces

Foil

Two opposite characters that highlight each others characteristics

Flashback

Interruption in chronological time to present prior events

POV

The way the story is told

First person

Character in the story narrates the story

3rd person limited

Outside narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of one or two characters

Omniscient

Outside narrator that knows the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters

Objective

Outside narrator who only relays the facts

Soliloquy

A character speaks alone on stage

Suspense

The building of anticipation in the reader

Theme

The central message of a work

Tone

Authors attitude

Mood

Effect on the reader

Foreshadowing

author hints at whats to come

Enjambment

Line of poetry that carries into the next without pause or punctuation

Blank verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter

Caesura

Pause or break in middle of line of poetry

Couplet

2 rhyming lines one right after the next

Ballad

Poem focusing on one dramatic event

Elegy

Emotional poem about death

Lyric

Poem focusing on one intense emotion

Ode

Poem praising something

Sonnet

Has three quatrains with a set rhyme scheme and its written in iambic pentameter

Meter

rhythmical pattern of a poem

Internal rhyme

Rhyme is in middle of line

End rhyme

Rhyme is at end of line

Slant rhyme

Stressed syllables match