AP English Mid-Term Terms
Terms
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- Anachronism
- a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other
- Analogy
- a similarity or comparison between two different things
- Didactic
- a term describing works that have the primary aim of teaching or instructing
- Style
- the choices in diction, tone, and syntax that a writer makes
- Ellipsis
- leaving something out that can be inferred
- Synecdoche
- a part of a thing that stands for the whole
- Allusion
- a direct or indirect reference to something that presumably is commonly known
- Tone
- the authors attitude towards his or her material, the audience, or both
- Ad hominem
- an argument that attacks another s position as weak due to human failing
- Litotes
- steep understatement
- Genre
- the major category into which a literary work fits
- Chiasmus
- a type of balance in which the second part is balanced against the first part but with parts reversed
- Parallelism
- the rhetorical framing of words to give structural similarity
- Symbol
- anything that stands for something else
- Polemic
- a vigorously argumentative work
- Tautology
- an unnecessary repetition of terms
- Satire
- a work that targets human vices and follies for reform or ridicule
- Irony
- the contrast between what is stated explicitly and what is really meant
- Hyperbole
- a figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration
- Anecdote
- a brief recounting of a relevant episode used to develop a point
- Antithesis
- balancing or contrasting one word or idea against another
- Stream of Consciousness
- a style of writing in which the feelings of the author are recorded as they occur
- Imagery
- words which evoke a picture in the mind of the reader or appeal to the senses
- Antecedent
- the word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun
- Allegory
- the device of using a character symbolically to represent an abstraction
- Paradox
- a statement that appears to be self contradictory but contains some degree of truth
- Onomatopoeia
- a figure of speech in which natural sounds are imitated in the sound of words
- Syntax
- the way a writer chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences
- Malapropism
- a humorous confusion of words
- Diction
- the writer's word choice
- Parody
- a work that closely imitates the style of another
- Tabula Rasa
- a blank slate
- Rhetoric
- the principles governing the art of writing effectively
- Motif
- an often repeated character, incident, or idea in literature
- Point of View
- the perspective from which a story is told
- Connotation
- the non literal, associative meaning of a word
- Theme
- insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work
- Pathos
- emotional appeal
- Oxymoron
- the joining of contradictory words to suggest a paradox
- Colloquialism
- the use of slang or informalities in speech or writing
- Denotation
- the literal, dictionary definition of a word
- Aphorism
- a terse statement that expresses a general truth
- Sarcasm
- bitter language meant to hurt or ridicule someone or something
- Invective
- an emotionally violent attack using strong, abusive language
- Apostrophe
- a figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person
- Conceit
- an elaborate, often extravagant metaphor or simile making an analogy between two totally dissimilar things
- Zeugma
- a construction in which one word is placed in the same grammatical relationship to two words
- Syllogism
- a deductive system of formal logic that presents two premises and usually leads to a conclusion
- Vernacular
- the language spoken by people who live in a particular locality
- Epiphany
- a showing forth of some divine being
- Euphemism
- a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for an unpleasant term
- Metonymy
- the name of an object is substituted for another closely associated with it
- Spoonerism
- an accidental interchange of sounds in two or more words