Q3 AP Lit Terms

Review AP Lit Terms

Allegory

A story that represents something else.

Mood

The feeling associated with the setting of a literary work.

Homily

A serious talk, speech, sermon, or lecture.

Ambiguity

Having multiple obscure meanings.

Litotes

Ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary.

Sarcasm

The use of irony to mock or ridicule someone or something.

Caricature

Distorting or exaggerating a person's physical features or other characteristics for comic effect.

Conceit

An extended metaphor between dissimilar objects.

Objectivity

An impersonal presentation of events and characters; strictly without judgement.

Diction

An author’s specific word choice.

Antecedent

The word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun.

Colloquialism

Informal slang and sayings.

Aphorism

A short statement that expresses a moral truth or saying.

Pedantic

Words that are overly scholarly or academic.

Syllogism

A form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two statements.

Cacophony

Harsh sounds, often used in poetry.

Euphony

Harmonious sounds, often used in poetry.

Subordinate Clause

A clause that cannot stand on its own; often called a dependent clause.

Invective

An emotionally violent, verbal attack using abusive, strong language.

Semantics

The study of the meaning, connotations, and relationships of words.

Conundrum

A riddle whose answer involves a pun; also a paradox or difficult problem.

Repetition

Repeating sounds, words, phrases, clauses, etc.

Concession

An argumentative strategy where the speaker acknowledges the validity of an opponent’s point.

Epiphora

The repetition of words or phrases at the end of several clauses.

Pacing

The movement of a literary piece from one point to another.

Refutation

The part of an argument where a speaker counters an opposing view.

Syntactic Fluency

Ability to create a variety of sentence structures that are complex and/or simple and varied in length.

Coherence/Unity

A piece of writing in which all the parts contribute to the development of the central idea, theme, or organizing principle.

Anachronism

A person, item, or event that doesn’t belong in a certain time period.

Adage

A saying containing a truth based on experience and often couched in metaphorical language.

Lyrical

Songlike, characterized by emotions, subjectivity, and imagination.

Archetype

An ideal version of a type; a typical example; an original model or form.

Bard

A poet; a performer who told heroic stories to musical accompaniment.

Bombast

Inflated, pretentious language.

Abstract

An abbreviated synopsis of a longer piece.

Isocolon

A succession of phrases of approximately equal length and corresponding structure.

Bathos

Insincere or overdone sentimentality.

Perfunctory

Carried out with minimum effort; bare-minimum.