AP Lang. Tone Words/Rhetorical Devices

Amiable

Having or showing pleasant, good-natured personal qualities

Appreciative

Feeling or showing appreciation

Consoling

Alleviating or lessening grief, sorrow, or disappointment; giving comfort

Impassioned

Filled with intense feeling or passion

Condescending

Showing or implying a usually patronizing decent from dignity or superiority

Apathetic

Having or showing little or no emotion

Disgruntled

Displeased or discontented; sulky

Pedantic

Overly concerned with minute details or formalisms; especially in teaching

Lugubrious

Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner

Pessimistic

The tendency to only expect bad outcomes

Poignant

Keenly distressing to the feelings

Somber

Gloomily dark; shadowy; dimly lighted OR serious, sad, without humor

Dramatic

Of or relating to the drama

Irreverent

Deficient in veneration or respect

Patronizing

Displaying or indicative of an offensively condescending mannor

Sarcastic

Of, relating to, or characterized by sarcasm

Candid

Frank; outspoken; open and sincere

Nostalgic

A sentimental or wistful yearning for the happiness felt in a former place, time, or situation

Provocative

Tending or serving to provoke; inciting, stimulating, irritating

Urbane

Reflecting elegance, sophistication, etc., especially in expression

Allusion

Short, informal reference to a famous person or event

Amplification

Repeating a word or expression while adding more detail to it, in order to emphasize

Analogy

Compares two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object

Anaphora

The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrase, clauses or sentences

Antithesis

Clear contrasting relationship between two ideas

Asyndeton

Omitting conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses

Diacope

Repetition of a word or phrase after an intervening word or phrase

Epistrophe

Counterpart to anaphora, repetition of the same word or words comes at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences

Euphemism

Substitution of an agreeable or at least non-offensive expression

Eponym

Substitutes for a particular attribute the name of a famous person recognized for that attribute

Hyperbaton

Inversion; draws attention to the phrase or amplifies a word

Irony

Language that signifies the opposite

Metaphor

Compares two different things

Metonymy

Metaphorical image is closely associated with the subject in which it is being compared

Oxymoron

A paradox reduced to two words; placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to one another

Paradox

Assertion seemingly opposed to common sense but may have some truth in it

Parallelism

Recurrent syntactical similarity; repeating grammatical structure

Polysyndeton

The use of a conjunction between each word, phrase, or clause; opposite of asyndeton

Synecdoche

The part stands for the whole, the whole for the part

Zuegma

Two different words linked to a verb or an adjective which is strictly appropriate to only one of them