Ap English Terms

Front 1

allegory

Back 1

the use of characters or events to represent ideas or principles in a story, play, or picture

Front 2

allusion

Back 2

an instance of indirect reference

Front 3

anaphora

Back 3

the repetition of beginning words or phrases

Front 4

anecdote

Back 4

a short account of an interesting or humorous incident

Front 5

antithesis

Back 5

the balance of two opposites in a two part parallelism

Front 6

apostrophe

Back 6

a rhetorical device in which a speaker addresses an absent person, an abstraction, or an inanimate obhect

Front 7

a priori reasoning

Back 7

based on what comes first chronologically

Front 8

caesura

Back 8

a rhythmical pause separating the two halves of an Anglo-Saxon verse line

Front 9

chiasmus

Back 9

the crossing pattern of repeating words in reverse order

Front 10

cliche

Back 10

a trite or overused expression or idea

Front 11

colloquialism

Back 11

language that is characteristic of or suited to the spoken language or to informal writing; conversational tone

Front 12

diction

Back 12

word choice in writing

Front 13

epic poem

Back 13

s long narrative poem about the adventures of gods or of a hero

Front 14

epiphora

Back 14

repetition of last words of phrases

Front 15

frame story

Back 15

a story within a story

Front 16

inductive reasoning

Back 16

specific to general reasoning

Front 17

juxtaposition

Back 17

To place side by side, especially for comparison and contrast

Front 18

kenning

Back 18

a metaphorical phrase for compound word used to describe a person, place, thing, or event in Anglo-Saxon poetry

Front 19

metonymy

Back 19

a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated

Front 20

oxymoron

Back 20

a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined

Front 21

paradox

Back 21

a seemingly contradictory statement that may seem nonetheless be true

Front 22

purple patch

Back 22

ordinary speech or writing w/out metrical structure

Front 23

rhetoric

Back 23

the skill of using spoken or written writing effectively

Front 24

rhetorical question

Back 24

a question to which no answer is expected; often used for rhetorical effect

Front 25

satire

Back 25

a literary work that attacks human vice or folly through irony, derision, or wit

Front 26

syntax

Back 26

sentence structure in writing

Front 27

synecdoche

Back 27

a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.

Front 28

understatement

Back 28

o state or represent less strongly or strikingly than the facts would bear out; set forth in restrained, moderate, or weak terms:

Front 29

vignette

Back 29

a literary sketch

Front 30

zeugma

Back 30

a sin which a single word, especially a verb, is applied to two or more nouns when its sense in appropriate to only one of them or to both in different ways