AP Lang Vocab

  • Anticlimax - a break in the climatic order of events, making the climax less intense

  • Deus ex machina - means “God from the machine.” The resolution of the plot by some incredibly implausible chance

  • Denouement - falling action

  • Foil Character - has similar or drastically different traits than the protagonist, play off of each other (ex. Ron and Harry)

  • Stock Character - stereotyped character

  • Abstract noun - intangible - ex. Love

  • Antecedent - word referred to by the pronoun (what the pronoun is standing in for)

  • Active voice - said to be transitive active if the subject is performing the verb - ex. I ate the pizza

  • Passive voice - said to be transitive passive if the subject is acted up by the verb - ex. The pizza was eaten by me

  • Preposition - word related to noun or pronoun (transitional phrase) - ex. I ate pizza after the ritual killing, above, around, of, to

  • Conjunction - joins units of a sentence

  • Coordinating conjunction - ex. FANBOYS

  • Subordinate conjunction - ex. While I was at the dentist… (doesn’t need punctuation)

  • Dangling modifiers - no subject mentioned - ex. To be excused from class, a doctor’s note is required

  • Anachronism - history is mixed up on purpose (ex. Fallout) or accident

  • Burlesque - an exaggerated form of comedy - ex. Rocky Horror

  • Canon - stuff they wanted out (so even if written but not published its not canon)

  • Epigraph - quotation on the title page of a book or heading a chapter/section

  • Grotesque - anything having the qualities - bizarre, awkward, out of context

  • Realism - any type of fiction that could’ve actually happened

  • Romanticism - a movement from neoclassism

  • Satire - something supposed to be funny but has a point to it

  • Narrative structure - chronological order of a story, starts at beginning

  • Dramatic structure - a series of scenes, anything in verse - ex. Romeo and Juliet

  • Discursive structure - organized like an argument - first… second… third…

  • Style - The arrangement of words best expressing the author

  • Tone - what the author thinks about the subject AND how they present it

  • Voice - overall presence, doesn’t have to be about tone

  • Allegory - long-term metaphors representing something usually taboo - ex. birds and bees talk using metaphors

  • Analogy - compares things that would not normally be put together

  • Aphorism - short statement expressing a truth or moral principle, thing that would be quoted

  • Apostrophe - directly talking to something that’s not there - ex. “love why doth thou torment me so”

  • Conceit - what someone thinks it’s an especially witty metaphor (just a metaphor), elaborate poetic comparison or image (special comparison)

  • Dead metaphor - figure of speech only used in a denotative sense now - ex. There’s more than one way to skin a dead cat

  • Metonymy - ex. The White House said, the pot is boiling (the water in the pot is boiling)

  • Premise - statement offered as a reason to support a conclusion - aka assumed to be true

  • Concession - accepting at least part of an opposing viewpoint

  • Deductive argument - thought that premises can provide a guarantee to a conclusion

  • Inductive argument - thought that premises can be strong enough to say that a conclusion is likely true or not

  • Ad Hominem - personally attacking the opponents instead of the arguments

    • Trump

  • Appeal to Authority - because someone has authority, they must be right

  • Bandwagon - since everyone else believes, it must be right; just because you hear it doesn’t mean it's true

    • Cornpone Opinions calls this out

  • Post Hoc - assuming that something in the past is impacting something right now (if you have to make a lot of connections between ideas)

    • There were no nuclear weapons before women could vote so therefore women’s suffrage led to nuclear weapons

  • Non Sequitur - not adding a detailed explanation, missing a step in the argument

    • “so it goes” means Kurt Vonnegut hates war

  • Slippery slope - assuming the worst case scenario will happen

    • Having a glass of wine means you’ll become an alcoholic and then become homeless

  • Fallacy of Accident - a rule that has absolutely no exceptions

    • Cutting people is a crime. Surgeons cut people. Therefore, surgeons are criminals.

  • Converse Fallacy of Accident - exceptions should apply to everyone

    • If my mother with cancer is allowed to use fentanyl then everyone should be able to use it

  • False Dilemma - two choices where one is so weak they must choose the one that isn’t really a choice

    • Do you support the Patriot Act or do you hate America?

  • Begging the Question - assuming the conclusion of something

    • We must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime.

  • Appeal to Ignorance - since you can’t prove something isn’t true so it must be true

    • Maggie and Santa Claus have never been seen in the same room so Maggie must be Santa Claus

  • Observational Selection - only looking at evidence that proves a point, ignoring other evidence that contradicts it

    • Flat Earthers

  • Statistics of Small Numbers - broad conclusions from statistics of a small sample that fails to sufficiently represent an entire population

  • Strawman - intentionally oversimplifying an issue

    • Guns don’t kill people, people kill people

  • Ad Populum - speaking to people’s biases and prejudices rather than their ability to reason

    • Mentioning an opponent’s race, sex, or religion

  • Appeal to Tradition - since we’ve always done it that way so we should keep doing it that way, we at least need to examine it

    • Holiday traditions or dates

  • Slanted Words or Phrases - calling people names

  • Scare Tactics

  • Excluded Middle - only talking to the most radical sides, ignoring the majority (people in the middle)

  • Tu Quoque - ignoring criticism by criticizing another person for the original reason, blaming other people for something you did

    • Donald Trump is old so he calls Joe Biden old

  • Personal Incredulity - because something is difficult to understand, a person assumed it cannot be true

    • Chemistry/Stephen Lehman

  • Synecdoche (sin-neck-doe-key) - part of something stands for the whole thing - ex. Head of cattle

  • First person central - main character telling the story

  • First person peripheral - character in the action but not the focus - ex. Nick in The Great Gatsby

  • First person plural - “we”

  • Cosmic irony - fate - ex. First stanza of Romeo and Juliet “these two star-crossed lovers will die”

  • Simple sentence - one sentence and one verb - ex. I like cheesecake

  • Compound - two clauses - ex. I like cheesecake and I like sitting on the couch

  • Complex sentence - two subjects and verbs that can stand by themselves - ex. While i ate cheesecake, I sat on the couch

  • Compound-complex sentence - 3 or more clauses

  • Periodic sentence - main idea at the end - ex. While I ate cheesecake, I sat on the couch

  • Loose sentence - ex. I sat on the couch while I ate cheesecake

  • Telegraphic sentence - less than 5 words

  • Didactic - teaches a lesson or moral

  • Gothic - writing characterized by gloom, mystery, fear/death, architecture of middle ages like cathedral

  • Invective - emotionally violent/abusive language

  • Homily - stopping a talk to teach a moral lesson - means “sermon”

  • Formal diction - level of language in serious books and lofty discourse

  • Informal diction - relaxed but polite conversation - no other purpose behind the language

  • Colloquial diction - slang from a highly specific area (“I’m cooked” is just slang because it’s used all over)

  • Auditory imagery - ex. Br-r-r-ring

  • Olfactory imagery - scent

  • Kinesthetic imagery- movement

  • Tactile imagery - feeling/touch

  • Assonance - repetition of vowel sounds

  • Litotes - understatement, achieving ironic effect

  • Paradox - putting things together that appear contrary but both can be true at once - ex. PATRIOT Act