AP Lit Vocab Week 6
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Created by:
megansaysoy on September 22, 2009
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16 terms
Latin | English |
|---|---|
| colloquialism |  a word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing, but sometimes inappropriate in a formal essay |
| connotation | The associations, images, or impressions carried by a word, as opposed to the word's literal meaning. They may be individual (resulting from personal experience), group (shared by people with the same professional, national, linguistic, or racial background), or general (common to everyone) |
| consonance | The close repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after differing vowel sounds: leave/love, short/shirt. Like alliteration, it is used in poetry to create emphasis and unity |
| couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme and that are written to the same meter, or pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. |
| closed couplet | A couplet that is grammatically and logically complete in itself. It is composed of end-stopped lines (ending with a syntactical pause) rather than run-on lines (sense continuing into next line without a pause) |
| cubist poetry | Poetry that presents an experience as fragmented elements rearranged to form a new synthesis, or whole. Such poetry is influenced by cubism, an abstract style of painting and sculpture that presents natural objects as collections of geometric shapes and figures. (think E. E. Cummings) |
| cultural primitivism | The belief that the natural, the simple, the spontaneous and free is superior to the artificial, the sophisticated, the consciously crafted and controlled |
| dactyl | A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables, as in the word "timelessly" |
| dead metaphor | A metaphor that, through repeated and customary use, has lost its figurativeness and is taken literally, like "the heart of the matter" |
| denotation | The precise, literal meaning of a word, without emotional associations or overtones. For example, although the word "gold" may suggest riches, power, and greed, its meaning is precisely "a malleable, ductile, yellow trivalent and univalent metallic element." |
| denouement | Literally, unraveling, as of a knot. The final resolution of the conflicts and complications of a play. While roughly synonymous with catastrophe, this term has traditionally been used in speaking about comedies and melodramas, while catastrophe has been reserved for tragedy in a way that catastrophe is not applicable to comedy. The resolution of a novel or short story is also called this |
| deus ex machina | = "god from the machine." In modern drama and fiction, any forced or artificial device introduced by the author to solve some difficult problem with the resolution of a plot. For example, a last-minute reprieve saves the hero from wrongful execution. Considered a weakness in serious drama, it is a common element in melodrama. |
| diction | Word choice. There are two basic standards - not mutually exclusive - by which a speaker's or writer's word choice is usually judged: clarity and appropriateness. Clear word choice is both precise and concrete, including a high proportion (approximately one out of every 6 words) of strong verbs and verbals. Appropriate word choice is at a level - formal, informal, colloquial, slang - suitable to the occasion. |
| didactic literature | Poetry, plays, novels, and stories whose primary purpose is to guide, instruct, or teach |
| dimeter | A line of poetry consisting of two metrical feet. Look up Emily Dickinson's "I Went to Heaven" |
| dirge | A funeral song of lamentation: a short lyric of mourning |
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