AP Literature Fall Final Exam: Words to Know

• Allegory - A narrative or visual representation, such as a story, poem, or picture, can be interpreted to reveal a hidden message.

• Allusion - refers to a person, event, or thing from another text.

• Apostrophe - a speech or address to a person who is not present or a personified object.

• Aside - a speech delivered to the audience; and the other characters cannot hear.

• Assonance - when words repeat the same vowel sound.

• Elegy - a poem of serious reflection, typically lamenting the dead.

• Euphemism - a mild or indirect word to replace a harsher word.

• Hyperbole - an exaggeration as a rhetorical device. 

• Invocation - a calling onto a deity for help or inspiration.

• Metaphor - a figure of speech where a word or phrase is applied to an object which is not literally applicable. 

• Oxymoron - a figure of speech where two opposite/contradictory words are placed next to each other.

• Parody - an imitation of the style of a particular writer.

• Personification - the attribution of human characteristics to things, ideas, etc. that are non-human.

• Rhyme scheme - a poet’s deliberate pattern of rhyming words at the end of lines.

• Syntax - the word order, tense, subject-verse agreement, and sentence structure employed to create an effect in writing.

• Understatement - a literary device where a particular quality is downplayed or presented less than the true situation. 

General Vocabulary:

• Laudatory ⇾ A piece of writing expressing praise or admiration for someone.

• Meticulous ⇾ Very careful and paying attention to every detail.

• Paucity ⇾ A small amount of something, or less than what is needed.

• Raconteur ⇾ A person who tells funny or interesting stories.

• Sanctimonious ⇾ Excessively displaying religious devotion, almost hypocritically.

• Sardonic ⇾ To be scornfully mocking, a form of humor that is not necessarily malicious, but has a degree of skepticism.