AP Literature Terms: Figurative Language, Figures of Speech, and Metrical Terms

Vocabulary review flashcards covering figures of speech, figurative language devices, sensory imagery, and metrical poetic terms.

Figurative Language (Figures of Speech)

A way of saying one thing and meaning something else.

Allegory

A prolonged metaphor; a narrative in which characters, objects, and events have underlying political, religious, moral, or social meanings.

Allusion

A reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, biblical reference, artwork, or music.

Ambiguity

A technique by which a writer deliberately suggests two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work.

Anachronism

Assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence.

Apostrophe

An address to the dead as if living; to the inanimate as if animate; to the absent as if present; to the unborn as if alive.

Archetype

An abstract or ideal conception of a type; a perfectly typical example; an original model or form.

Conceit

An unusual or surprising comparison between two very different things; a special kind of metaphor or complicated analogy.

Hyperbole

A deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration.

Imagery

The images or sensory details of a work, including visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory details.

Visual Imagery

Descriptions of images that can be seen.

Auditory Imagery

Descriptions of images that can be heard.

Tactile Imagery

Descriptions of the texture or touch of something.

Kinesthetic Imagery

Descriptions of motion or movement.

Olfactory Imagery

Images that describe smells.

Gustatory Imagery

Descriptions of tastes, such as sweet, sour, bitter, or salty.

Montage

A quick succession of images or impressions used to express an idea.

Metaphor

A comparison of two unlike things not using 'like' or 'as', often introduced by 'is'.

Extended Metaphor

A metaphor developed using several words or phrases on the same subject as a comparison.

Mixed Metaphor

Two metaphors jumbled together, often illogically.

Dead Metaphor (cliche)

A metaphor that has been overused so that its original impact has been lost.

Metonomy

The use of the name of one thing for that of another associated with or suggested by it.

Motif

The repetition or variations of an image or idea in a work that is used to develop the theme or characters.

Oxymoron

A form of paradox that combines a pair of opposite terms into a single unusual expression; two opposing ideas fused together.

Paradox

A statement that appears contradictory at first, but actually presents a truth.

Personification

Giving human characteristics to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.

Simile

A comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words 'like,' 'as,' or 'resembles.'

Symbol

Any object, person, place, or action that maintains its own meaning while at the same time standing for something broader than itself.

Synaesthesia

The description of one kind of sensation in terms of another, such as the description of sounds in terms of colors or colors in terms of sound.

Synecdoche

A form of metaphor where a part of something stands for the whole, the container represents the thing being contained, or the material from which an object is made stands for the object itself.

Syllepsis

The linking of one word with two other words in two strikingly different ways.

Understatement

The opposite of hyperbole; a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is.

Litote

A type of understatement in which something affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.

Alliteration

The repetition of similar or identical consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of words.

Assonance

The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds.

Ballad meter

A four-line stanza rhymed abcb in which lines one and three have four feet and lines two and four have three feet.

Blank verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

End-stopped

A line with a pause at the end, concluding with a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark.

Free verse

Poetry that is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical.

Heroic couplet

Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc, usually containing a complete thought in the two-line unit.

Hexameter

A line containing six feet.

Iamb

A two-syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable; the most common foot in English poetry.

Internal rhyme

Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.

Onomatopoeia

The use of words whose very sound suggests their actual meaning.

Pentameter

A line containing five feet.

Sonnet

A poem written in iambic pentameter, normally composed of fourteen lines, categorized as Italian (Petrarchan) or English (Shakespearean).

Stanza

A repeated grouping of three or more lines, usually with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

Terza rima

A three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc.