- allegory: characters are symbols, has a moral
- alliteration: repetition at close intervals of initial consonant words
- allusion: a reference to something in literature of history
- anaphora: repetition of the same word or words at the start of two or more lines
- apostrophe: someone absent, dead, or imagianary, or an abstraction, is being addressed as if it could reply
- archetype: a character or personality type found in every society
- assonance: repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds
- blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter
- cacophony: harsh, non-melodic, unpleasant sounding arrangement of words
- caesura: a natural pause in the middle of a line, sometimes coinciding with punctuation
- conceit: an extended witty, paradoxical, or startling metaphor
- connotation: what a word suggests beyond its surface definition
- consonance: repetition at close intervals of final consonant sounds
- couplet: two successive lines which rhyme, usually at the end of a work
- denotation: basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word
- diction: choice of words for effect
- didactic poetry: poetry with the primary purpose of teaching or preaching
- dramatic monologue: character "speaks" through the poem; a character study
- elegy: poem which expresses sorow over a death of someone for whom the poet cared, or on another solemn theme
- enjambment: describes a line of poetry in which the sense and grammatical construction continues on to the next line
- euphony: pleasant, easy to articulate words
- feminine rhyme: latter two syllables of first word rhyme with latter two syllables of second word (ceiling appealing)
- free verse: no fixed meter or rhyme
- hyperbole: exaggeration, overstatement
- iambic pentameter: 70% of verse is written this way; ten syllables per line, following an order of unaccented-accented syllables
- imagery: representation through language of a sensory experience
- internal rhyme: repetition of sounds within a line (but not at the end of the line)
- irony: incongruity or discrepancy between the implied and expected; verbal, dramatic, situational
- masculine rhyme: final syllable of first word rhymes with final syllable of second word (scald recalled)
- metaphor: implied or direct comparison
- meter: regularized rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables; accents occur at approx. equal intervals of time
- metonymy: symbolism; one thing is used as a substitute for another with which it is closely identified (the White House)
- mood: the atmosphere suggested by the structure and style of the poem
- onomatopoeia: use of words which mimic their meaning in sound
- oxymoron: compact paradoxl two successive words contradict each other
- pace: tempo or rate implied by the structure and style of the poem
- paradox: statement or situation containing seemingly contradictory elements
- parallelism: presents coordinating ideas in a coordinating manner
- persona: assumed speaker of the poem; typically used synonymously with 'speaker'
- personification: giving a non-human the characteristics of a human
- refrain: repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines in a pattern
- rhyme: repetition of end sounds
- rhythm: wave-like recurrence of sound
- sibilance: hissing sounds represented by s, z, sh
- simile: comparison using 'like' or 'as'
- sonnet: 14 line poem, fixed rhyme scheme, fixed meter (usually 10 syllables per line)
- stanza: group of lines
- structure: internal organization of a poem's content
- style: an author's combined use of these ideas into a recurring pattern of usage
- symbolism: something (object, person, situation, etc.) means more than what it is
- synecdoche: symbolism; the part signifies the whole, or the whole the part (all hands on board)
- syntax: word order or grammatical appropriateness
- theme: central idea
- tone: writer's attitude toward the audience or subject, implied or related directly
- understatement: saying less than one means, for effect
AP English Literary Terms