AP Lit - Poetry Vocab 1

Accent

the stressed syllable in a word or the rhythmic stress in poetry

Alliteration

the repetition of beginning consonant sounds in multiple words in a single line

Allusion

an indirect reference to a person

Ambiguity

a word

Apostrophe

a figure of speech in which the speaker addresses someone absent

Assonance

uses the repetition of vowel sounds within nearby words

Ballad

a narrative poem that tells a story

Ballad stanza

a four-line stanza (quatrain) typically found in ballads

Blank verse

unrhymed poetry with a consistent meter

Cacophony

a harsh

Caesura

a deliberate pause or break within a line of poetry

Connotation

the implied or suggested meaning of a word beyond its literal definition

Consonance

a form of rhyme involving the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different

Couplet and Heroic couplet

two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme and a heroic couplet is a specific type of couplet written in iambic pentameter

Diction

an author's or character's specific choice and use of words in a text

Elegy

a mournful poem

End-stopped line

a metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon

Enjambment

when a line of poetry continues to the next line without a terminal punctuation mark

Epic

a long narrative poem or a literary work that tells the story of a heroic figure's extraordinary deeds

Epigram

a short