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| 7697692940 | allegory | a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. | 0 | |
| 7697692941 | alliteration | the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. | 1 | |
| 7697695542 | allusion | an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference | 2 | |
| 7697698048 | ambiguity | a statement this is open to more than one interpretation: deliberately unclear to allow for individuals to interpret it in different or personally relevant ways | 3 | |
| 7697700029 | analogy | a similarity or comparison between two different between two different things or relationship between them. It can explain something unfamiliar (or abstract) by associating it with or pointing out its similarity to something familiar (or concrete). | 4 | |
| 7697717524 | anaphora | one of the devices of repetition, in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences | 5 | |
| 7697717525 | anecdote | a short narrative (story) detailing particulars of an interesting episode or event. The term most frequently refers to an incident in the life of a person. | 6 | |
| 7697720897 | antecedent | the word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun. The AP language exam occasionally asks for the this of a given pronoun in a long, complex sentence or in a group of sentences. | 7 | |
| 7697722936 | antithesis | a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else; rhetorically when two opposite things are put side by side in a comparison to accentuate the contrast. | 8 | |
| 7697724930 | aphorism | a saying or observation that contains a general truth, usually attributable to someone. Anonymous statements are often called proverbs. | 9 | |
| 7732733579 | allegory | Example: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: Aslan = Christ and Edmund = Judas. | 10 | |
| 7732745563 | alliteration | Example: "Peter's piglet pranced priggishly." | 11 | |
| 7732755362 | allusion | Example: "I am like Romeo with the ladies." (a reference to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, wherein Romeo is very successful in quickly wooing Juliet.) | 12 | |
| 7732763954 | ambiguity | Example: "I rode a black horse in red pajamas." - It's unclear if the rider or the horse was wearing red pajamas. "I slapped Jason with gloves on." - It's unclear if the narrator or Jason is wearing gloves. | 13 | |
| 7732777626 | analogy | Example: "He that voluntarily continues ignorance is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces, as to him that should extinguish the tapers of a lighthouse might justly be imputed the calamities of shipwrecks" -Samuel Jackson "Building reading skill is just like lifting weights in the gym; you don't get stronger unless you work out!" - Ms. Walton | 14 | |
| 7732796285 | anaphora | Example: "We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air..." -Winston Churchill | 15 | |
| 7732807845 | anecdote | Example: Before Christmas morning breakfast, parents tell their children about their very first Christmas together. In the middle of a motivational speech, the speaker tells a short story from his own life illustrating the principle he's talking about. | 16 | |
| 7732827546 | antecedent | Example: "The weather is great today; let's make the most of it by going to the beach." the pronoun "it" refers to "the weather." | 17 | |
| 7732838344 | antithesis | Example: "Unlike short-sighted, egocentric humans, God 'sees with equal eye' the fall of a hero and a sparrow, the destruction of an atom or a solar system." (humans vs. God); "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." (best vs. worst); "the highest highs and the lowest lows" (high vs. low) | 18 | |
| 7732845479 | aphorism | Example: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Thomas Bertram Lance; or "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK, Jr. | 19 | |
| 7984612941 | apostrophe | A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction such as Liberty or Love. It is an address to someone or something that cannot answer. | 20 | |
| 7984620486 | apostrophe | Example: Clint Eastwood's RNC speech in which he spoke to an empty chair as if President Obama were seated in it. Wordsworth's poem addressing the dead English poet John Milton: "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee." | 21 | |
| 7984633823 | asyndeton | A rhetorical device in which the speaker omits conjunctions (and, so, but, etc.) between words, phrases or clauses for deliberate effect. | 22 | |
| 7984645221 | asyndeton | Example: "On his return, he received medals, honors, treasures, titles, fame." (no "and") | 23 | |
| 7984653943 | atmosphere | the emotional mood created by the entirety of a literary work, established partly by the setting and partly by the author's choice of objects that are described (e.g. the weather). | 24 | |
| 7984664398 | atmosphere | "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher." - Edgar Allan Poe | 25 | |
| 7984673952 | chiasmus | (from the Greek word for "criss-cross," based on the Greek letter "chi," which is written as X.) A figure of speech in which two successive phrases or clauses are parallel in syntax, but reverse the order of the analogous words (which are often opposites). | 26 | |
| 7984688968 | chiasmus | "Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure." - Lord Byron | 27 | |
| 7984695624 | colloquial (adjective); colloquialism (noun) | the use of slang or informal speech in a text to create a conversational, familiar tone or evoke a particular dialect or region. | 28 | |
| 7984728976 | colloquial (adjective); colloquialism (noun) | Example: "Man, that's tight.";"We ain't gonna take it!"; "Hey listen sister, I love that Mr. Man, and I can't tell you why/there ain't no reason why I should love that man/it must be sumptin that the angels done planned." | 29 | |
| 7984746617 | coherence | a principle demanding that the parts of any composition be arranged so that the meaning of the whole may be immediately clear and intelligible. A progressive, logical arrangement of thoughts. | 30 | |
| 7984754119 | coherence | Example: His paper was very well organized. He began with a clearly stated thesis, and all of the supporting paragraphs clarified and gave evidence to support his initial claim. The conclusion tidily summed up his argument without being repetitive. | 31 |
