Ap Lit Poetry Terms

Front 1

*anastrophe.

Back 1

A rhetorical term for the inversion of the normal order of the parts of a sentence. Writers,
especially poets, use anastrophe to place emphasis on a word or idea

Front 2

*apostrophe.

Back 2

The device, usually in poetry, of calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a
place, thing, or personified abstraction either to begin a poem or to make a dramatic break in thought
somewhere within the poem

Front 3

*assonance.

Back 3

The close repetition of middle vowel sounds between different consonant sounds:
fade/pale

Front 4

*cacophony.

Back 4

Harsh, clashing, or dissonant sounds, often produced by combinations of words that require
a clipped, explosive delivery

Front 5

*caesura.

Back 5

A pause within a line of poetry, often resulting from the natural rhythm of language and not
necessarily indicated by punctuation

Front 6

*conceit.

Back 6

An elaborate figure of speech comparing two very dissimilar things

Front 7

*consonance.

Back 7

The close repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after differing vowel sounds:
leave/love, short/shirt

Front 8

*denotation

Back 8

The precise, literal meaning of a word, without emotional associations or overtones

Front 9

*enjambment.

Back 9

The carrying of sense and grammatical structure in a poem beyond the end of one line,
couplet, or stanza and into the next. Enjambment occurs with the use of run-on lines

Front 10

*euphony.

Back 10

A succession of sweetly melodious sounds; the opposite of cacophony.

Front 11

*Homeric epithet

Back 11

A hyphenated adjective used repeatedly in conjunction with the same noun, so as to
form a unit of expression

Front 12

*kenning.

Back 12

A metaphoric compound word or phrase used as a synonym for a common noun

Front 13

*metonymy.

Back 13

A figure of speech that substitutes the name of a related object, person, or idea for the
subject at hand

Front 14

*parallelism.

Back 14

The technique of showing that words, phrases, clauses, or larger structures are comparable
in content and importance by placing them side by side and making them similar in form.

Front 15

*synechdoche.

Back 15

A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole thing

Front 16

*scansion.

Back 16

Analyzing the meter in lines of poetry by counting and marking the accented and unaccented
syllables, dividing the lines into metrical feet, and showing the major pauses, if any, within the line.

Front 17

*foot.

Back 17

The basic unit of rhythmic measurement in a line of poetry. A foot
consists of at least one accented (stressed) syllable and one or more unaccented (unstressed)
syllables

Front 18

*iambic foot.

Back 18

one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable

Front 19

*trochee (trochaic foot)

Back 19

one accented syllable followed by one unaccented syllable:

Front 20

*anapest (anapestic foot)

Back 20

two unaccented syllables followed by one accented syllable

Front 21

*dactyl (dactylic foot)

Back 21

one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables:

Front 22

*spondee (spondaic foot)

Back 22

two accented syllables

Front 23

*meter

Back 23

The fixed (or nearly fixed) pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in the lines of a poem
that produces its pervasive rhythm.

Front 24

*blank verse

Back 24

Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse should not be confused with
free verse. It is "blank" only in the sense that its lines do not rhyme; it is not metrically blank

Front 25

*couplet

Back 25

Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme and that are written to the same meter, or pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables

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*elegy

Back 26

A poem of sorrow or mourning for the dead; also a reflective poem in a solemn or sorrowful
mood.

Front 27

*free verse

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it is "free" of the regular beat
of meter, depending instead on the individual poet's sensitivity to the music of natural speech rhythms.
Free verse lacks rhyme and often has irregular line lengths and fragmentary syntax.

Front 28

*idyll.

Back 28

A short descriptive and narrative piece, usually a poem, about picturesque country life, an idealized
story of happy innocence

Front 29

*ode.

Back 29

A long and elaborate lyric poem

Front 30

*sonnet

Back 30

A fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter.

Front 31

*terza rima

Back 31

A form of verse composed of three-line stanzas, or tercets, linked by rhyme, as follows: abc,
bcb, cdc, ded, and so on. The word at the end of the middle line of each stanza rhymes with the words at
the ends of the first and third lines of each succeeding stanza

Front 32

*villanelle

Back 32

A lyric poem made up of five stanzas of three lines (tercets), plus a final stanza of four lines
(quatrain). In the tercets, the rhyme scheme is aba; in teh quatrain, it is abaa