Ap Lang

Allegory – A story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities .

Alliteration – Repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together .

Allusion – Reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture. An indirect reference .

Analogy – Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike .

Anaphora – Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row .

Anastrophe – Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Purpose is rhythm, emphasis, or euphony .

Antithesis – Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure .

Apostrophe – Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place, thing, or a personified abstract idea .

Assonance – The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds, especially in words that are together .

Asyndeton – Commas used without conjunction to separate a series of words, thus emphasizing the parts equally .

Chiasmus – In poetry, a type of rhetorical balance in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed .

Colloquialism – A word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but inappropriate for formal situations .

Conceit – An elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different; often an extended metaphor .

Connotation – The associations and emotional overtones attached to a word or phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition .

Didactic – Form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking .

Elegy – A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died .

Epanalepsis – Device of repetition in which the same expression is repeated both at the beginning and at the end of the line, clause, or sentence .

Epigraph – A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme .

Hyperbole – A figure of speech that uses incredible exaggeration or overstatement for effect .

Irony – A discrepancy between appearances and reality .

Juxtaposition – Placing normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases next to one another, creating surprise or contrast .

Litotes – A form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form .

Metonymy – A figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it (e.g., “the crown” for monarch) .

Polysyndeton – A sentence which uses a conjunction with no commas to separate items in a series (e.g., “X and Y and Z”) .

Synecdoche – A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole (e.g., “wheels” for a car)