Ap English Vocab

Front 1

Allegory

Back 1

– (n) 1. the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence 2. a symbolic representation

Front 2

Allusion

Back 2

– (n) 1. an implied or indirect reference 2. the act of hinting at something

Front 3

Anachronistic

Back 3

– (n) something that is chronologically out of place

Front 4

Anecdote

Back 4

– (n) a short story/narrative

Front 5

Antagonist

Back 5

– (n) a character who opposes the protagonist

Front 6

Antihero

Back 6

– (n) a protagonist who lacks heroic qualities

Front 7

Antithesis

Back 7

– (n) a. (1) the rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences (2) opposition, contrast b. (1) the second of two opposing constituents of an antithesis (2) the direct opposite

Front 8

Apostrophe

Back 8

– (n) the addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically

Front 9

Archetype

Back 9

– (n) Primordial image , character, or pattern of circumstances that recurs throughout literature and thought consistently enough to be considered universal.

Front 10

Aside

Back 10

– (n) an actor’s speech that is heard by the audience, but not other characters

Front 11

Ballad

Back 11

– (n) a narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing

Front 12

Bildungsroman

Back 12

– (n) a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character

Front 13

Blank Verse

Back 13

– (n) unrhymed verse; specifically unrhymed iambic pentameter verse

Front 14

Caesura

Back 14

– (n) 1 in modern prosody: a usually rhetorical break in the flow of sound in the middle of a line of verse 2 Greek & Latin prosody: a break in the flow of sound in a verse caused by the ending of a word within a foot

Front 15

Chronological

Back 15

– (adj) of, relating to, or arranged in or according to the order of time

Front 16

Climax

Back 16

– (n) the point in a story where the problem has been built up to its height and is about to be solved.

Front 17

Comedy

Back 17

– (n) a play/story that is funny

Front 18

Conceit

Back 18

– (n) excessive appreciation of one's own worth or virtue

Front 19

Connotation

Back 19

– (n) the positive or negative feelings that are associated with a word.

Front 20

Denotation

Back 20

– (n) a direct specific meaning as distinct from an implied or associated idea

Front 21

Denouement

Back 21

– (n) the end of a story where all the loose ends are tied up

Front 22

Deus ex Machina

Back 22

– (n) a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty

Front 23

Dialect

Back 23

– (n) a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary

Front 24

Diction

Back 24

– (n) 1. choice of words especially with regard to correctness, clearness, or effectiveness 2. vocal expression, pronunciation and enunciation of words

Front 25

Doppelganger

Back 25

– (n) a ghostly counterpart of a living person

Front 26

Dramatic Irony

Back 26

– (n) a plot device in which the audience's or reader's knowledge of events or individuals surpasses that of the characters. The words and actions of the characters therefore take on a different meaning for the audience or reader than they have for the play's characters.

Front 27

Dramatic Monologue

Back 27

– (n) a literary work (as a poem) in which a speaker's character is revealed in a monologue usually addressed to a second person

Front 28

Dystopia

Back 28

– (n) a novel that shows the dark side of a utopia

Front 29

Elegy

Back 29

– (n) 1. a poem in elegiac couplets 2. a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead

Front 30

Enjambment

Back 30

– (n) the running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so that closely related words fall in different lines

Front 31

Epic

Back 31

– (n) a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero

Front 32

Epigraph

Back 32

– (n) a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme

Front 33

Epistolary

Back 33

– (n) of, relating to, or suitable to a letter (on paper)

Front 34

Epitaph

Back 34

– (n) an inscription on or at a tomb or a grave in memory of the one buried there

Front 35

Euphemism

Back 35

– (n) the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant

Front 36

Existentialism

Back 36

– (n) a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad

Front 37

Extended Metaphor

Back 37

– (n) a metaphor that is developed at great length an appears frequently throughout a work

Front 38

Flashback

Back 38

– (n) when a story’s action goes into the past to follow a character’s memories.

Front 39

Foil

Back 39

– (n) someone or something that serves as a contrast to another

Front 40

Foot

Back 40

– (n) the basic unit of verse meter consisting of any of various fixed combinations or groups of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables

Front 41

Foreshadow

Back 41

– (n) to represent, indicate, or typify beforehand

Front 42

Frame Tale

Back 42

–(n) a story in which the main story is told

Front 43

Free Verse

Back 43

– (n) verse whose meter is irregular in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical

Front 44

Genre

Back 44

– (n) a category of literary composition

Front 45

Hero

Back 45

– (n) 1. a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability; an illustrious warrior; a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities; one that shows great courage 2. the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work.

Front 46

Heroic Couplet

Back 46

– (n) a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter

Front 47

Hubris

Back 47

– (n) pride, self-confidence in excessive amounts.

Front 48

Hyperbole

Back 48

– (n) extravagant exaggeration

Front 49

Imagery

Back 49

– (n) figurative language

Front 50

In media res

Back 50

– (n) “In the middle of things” a way of writing novels/telling stories.

Front 51

Introspection

Back 51

– (n) an examination of one's own thoughts and feelings

Front 52

Juxtaposition

Back 52

– (n) the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side

Front 53

Metaphor

Back 53

– (n) a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them

Front 54

Metaphysical Poetry

Back 54

– (n) name given to a group of English lyric poets of the 17th cent. The hallmark of their poetry is the metaphysical conceit (a figure of speech that employs unusual and paradoxical images)

Front 55

Meter

Back 55

– (n) systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse

Front 56

Metonymy

Back 56

– (n) a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as "crown" in "lands belonging to the crown")

Front 57

Modernism

Back 57

– (n) a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression

Front 58

Mood

Back 58

– (n) a conscious state of mind or predominant emotion

Front 59

Noble Savage

Back 59

– (n) a mythic conception of people belonging to non-European cultures as having innate natural simplicity and virtue uncorrupted by European civilization

Front 60

Ode

Back 60

– (n) a lyric poem usually marked by exaltation of feeling and style

Front 61

Onomatopoeia

Back 61

– (n) the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it

Front 62

Oxymoron

Back 62

– (n) a combination of contradictory or incongruous words

Front 63

Paradox

Back 63

– (n) a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true

Front 64

Parallelism

Back 64

– (n) repeated syntactical similarities introduced for rhetorical effect
Can be a repeated parallel action, or can be the way that verbs are stated.

Front 65

Parody

Back 65

– (n) a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule

Front 66

Pathetic Fallacy

Back 66

– (n) the ascription of human traits or feelings to inanimate nature

Front 67

Petrarchan/Italian Sonnet

Back 67

– (n) a sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet rhyming in any of various patterns

Front 68

Picaresque

Back 68

– (n) a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish protagonist

Front 69

Polysyndeton

Back 69

– (n) repetition of conjunctions in close succession (as in we have ships and men and money and stores)

Front 70

Propaganda

Back 70

– (n) ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause

Front 71

Protagonist

Back 71

– (n) the principal character in a literary work

Front 72

Pun

Back 72

– (n) the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound

Front 73

Quatrain

Back 73

– (n) a unit or group of four lines of verse

Front 74

Realism

Back 74

– (n) concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary

Front 75

Retrospection

Back 75

– (n) the act or process or an instance of surveying the past

Front 76

Rhetoric

Back 76

– (n) the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion

Front 77

Rhyme

Back 77

– (n) correspondence in terminal sounds of units of composition or utterance

Front 78

Rhythm

Back 78

– (n) an ordered recurrent alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech

Front 79

Romanticism

Back 79

– (n) a movement originating in the 18th century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms

Front 80

Satire

Back 80

– (n) a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn

Front 81

Scansion

Back 81

– (n) the analysis of verse to show its meter

Front 82

Sestina

Back 82

– (n) a lyrical fixed form consisting of six 6-line usually unrhymed stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of the three verses of the concluding tercet

Front 83

Shakespearean/English Sonnet

Back 83

– (n) a sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg

Front 84

Simile

Back 84

– (n) a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as

Front 85

Situational Irony

Back 85

– (n) Players and events coming together in improbable situations creating a tension between expected and real results.

Front 86

Soliloquy

Back 86

– (n) a dramatic monologue that represents a series of unspoken reflections

Front 87

Stanza

Back 87

– (n) a division of a poem consisting of a series of lines arranged together in a usually recurring pattern of meter and rhyme

Front 88

Stream of Consciousness

Back 88

– (n) the continuous unedited chronological flow of conscious experience through the mind

Front 89

Syllogism

Back 89

– (n) a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion

Front 90

Symbol

Back 90

– (n) something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship

Front 91

Synecdoche

Back 91

– (n) a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships)

Front 92

Syntax

Back 92

– (n) the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses)

Front 93

Tone

Back 93

– (n) style or manner of expression in speaking or writing

Front 94

Tragedy

Back 94

– (n) 1. (a) a medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great man (b) a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror (c) the literary genre of tragic dramas

Front 95

Understatement

Back 95

– (n) statement with restraint especially for effect

Front 96

Utopia

Back 96

– (n) a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions

Front 97

Valediction

Back 97

– (n) an act of bidding farewell

Front 98

Verbal Irony

Back 98

– (n) sarcasm used in literature

Front 99

Verisimilitude

Back 99

– (n) something that depicts realism

Front 100

Villanelle

Back 100

– (n) a chiefly French verse form running on two rhymes and consisting typically of five tercets and a quatrain in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain