AP Vocab B-E

Balance

Examples:

“To err is human; to forgive is divine.”

"The higher the mountain, the steeper the climb."

Characterization

(the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a  character. )

Examples:

Direct, someone says something about ones character
Indirect, author tries to show character through things

Chiasmus

Examples:

“Flowers  are lovely, love is flowerlike.”

"Dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves."

“She has all my love; my heart belongs to her."

Cliche

Examples:

"Better late than never"

"What goes around comes around"

“Avoid it like the plague”

Colloquialism

Examples:

“He’s out of his head if he thinks I’m gonna go for such a stupid idea.”

“Piece of cake”

“Go Bananas!”

Comedy

Example:

- Centers on love, mistaken identities, and romantic complications that resolve happily.

- Treats serious, morbid, or taboo subjects (like war or death) with ironic humor.

Conceit

Examples:

“Two lovers saying goodbye are compared to the two legs of a drafting compass.”

“Juliet's crying is compared to a stormy ocean, and her body is a fragile boat riding the waves. Her sighs are the winds, and her eyes are the tides.”

Conflict

Example:

Character v Character (Gatsby v Tom, or usually Hero v Villain in certain stories)

Character v Nature (Jurassic Park)

Connotation

Examples:

- In Animal Farm, calling someone “pig” can be a disgusting insult and in the story, the pigs are the leaders of the farm and they are corrupted

- In LOTF, a conch is just a seashell but the boys decided to bring everyone together, making it symbolize order.

Couplet

Examples:

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.”

“Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote”

Dialect

Examples:

"Mah sweat is done paid for this house and Ah reckon Ah kin keep on sweatin' in it." (African American Vernacular English & Southern Rural)

"Atticus ain't never whipped me since I can remember and I plan to keep it that way.” (Southern America)

Diction

Examples:

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family.”

Didactic

Examples:

The Ant and the Grasshopper (Ends with a clear moral rule for daily life.)

Animal Farm (Warns readers about the dangers of corruption and totalitarianism during the Russian Revolution)

Elegy

Examples:

O Captain! My Captain! (Commemorated the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln)

Adonais (Written to honor the untimely death of fellow poet John Keats)

Epanalepsis

Example:

"The land was ours before we were the land's."

"Beloved is mine; she is Beloved."

Epic

Examples:

The Epic of Gilgamesh (An ancient Mesopotamian story about a king's search for wisdom and immortality.)

Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey (Ancient Greek poems about the Trojan War and the long, dangerous journey of Odysseus trying to get home.)

Epigraph

A short quotation, phrase, or poem at the beginning of the book.

Example:

How to K*** a Mocking Bird - "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

Frankenstein - “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man, did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?"

Great Gatsby - “Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

Epistrophe

Example:

“..and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"of the beautiful Annabel Lee." (multiple lines having this at the end)

Epithet

Examples:

"Swift-footed Achilles" and "wine-dark sea"

"Star-cross'd lovers"

"Comrade Napoleon"

Enjambment

Examples:

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:"

Explication

Someone interpreting this meaning of the text