Vocab Ap Lang

Allegory

The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning or in the middle of two or more adjacent words.

Allusion

A reference in a written or spoken text to another text or to some particular body of knowledge.

Anadiplosis

The repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause.

Anaphora

The repetition of a group of words at the beginning of successive clauses.

Anecdote

A brief narrative offered in a text to capture the audience's attention or to support a generalization or claim.

Antithesis

The juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas, often in parallel structure.

Apology

An elaborate statement justifying some controversial, even contentious, position.

Apostrophe

A type of soliloquy where nature is addressed as though human.

Appositive

A noun or noun phrase that follows another noun immediately and defines or amplifies its meaning.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in the stressed syllable of two or more adjacent words.

Asyndeton

The omission of conjunctions between related clauses.

Audience

The person or persons who listen to a spoken text or read a written one and are capable of responding to it.

Connotation

The implied meaning of a word, in contrast to its directly expressed 'dictionary meaning'.

Context

The convergence of time, place, audience, and motivating factors in which a piece of writing or a speech is situated.

Denotation

The 'dictionary definition' of a word, in contrast to its connotation, or implied meaning.

Dialect

The describable patterns of language used by a particular cultural or ethnic population.

Diction

Word choice, which is viewed on scales of formality/informality and concreteness/abstraction.

Double entendre

The double (or multiple) meanings of a group of words that the speaker or writer purposely left ambiguous.

Epithet

A word or phrase adding a characteristic to a noun.

Ethos

The appeal of a text to the credibility and character of the speaker, writer, or narrator.

Euphemism

An indirect expression of unpleasant information in such a way as to lessen its impact.

Extended analogy

An extended passage arguing that if two things are similar in one or two ways, they are probably similar in other ways as well.

Fable

A narrative in which fictional characters, often animals, take actions that have ethical or moral significance.

Genre

A piece of writing classified by type.

Hyperbole

An extreme exaggeration for effect.

Imagery

Language that evokes particular sensations or emotionally rich experiences in a reader.

Implied metaphor

A metaphor embedded in a sentence instead of being expressed directly.

Inference

A conclusion that a reader or listener reaches by means of their own thinking rather than being told directly.

Intention

The goal of a writer or speaker hoped to achieve with the text.

Invention

The art of generating material for text; brainstorming.

Irony

Writing or speaking that implies the contrary of what is actually written or spoken.

Litotes

An understatement.