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| 2915469611 | Allegory | An extended NARRATIVE in PROSE or VERSE in which Characters, events and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface story. The underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political social or satiric. The characters are often PERSONIFICATIONS of such abstractions as greed, envy, hope, charity or fortitude. | 0 | |
| 2915499794 | Alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or within words. | 1 | |
| 2915517547 | allusion | A passing reference to historical or fictional CHARACTERS, places or events, or to other works the writer assumes the reader will recognize. Allusions to the Bible and William Shakespeare's works are common because both enjoy a vast readership. Old LITERATURE contains many allusions to Greek and Roman literature, which formerly played an important role to education. The power of allusions lies in suggestion and connotation. | 2 | |
| 2915517548 | ambiguity | Double or even multiple meaning. Unintentional ability is considered a defect in scientific writing and wherever clarity is prized. Intentional ambiguity in the form of a PUN, or play on words, is a source of HUMOR much used by comics. The term has also been applied to the richness of association valued in POETRY. | 3 | |
| 2915517549 | anachronism | An event, object, person or thing that is out of its order in time. Anachronisms abound in Shakespeare. | 4 | |
| 2915517550 | analogy | A comparison of similar things, often for the purpose of using something familiar to explain something unfamiliar. For example, the branching river system is often examined by comparing it to a tree. | 5 | |
| 2915532634 | anecdote | A brief NARRATIVE of an entertaining and presumably true incident. Anecdotes are used in biographical writing, ESSAYS, and speeches to reveal a personality trait or to illustrate a point. | 6 | |
| 2915532636 | antecedent | Something that comes before. In the context of grammar, the antecedent of a pronoun is the word that the pronoun stands for. | 7 | |
| 2915532638 | antithesis | a figure of speech in which opposing or contrasting ideas are balanced against each other in a grammatically parallel syntax. | 8 | |
| 2915532640 | aphorism | A terse statement of a principle or truth, usually an observation about life; a maxim. Aphorisms can be witty as well as insightful, as this aphorism by George Eliot demonstrates: "The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history." | 9 | |
| 2915532642 | Apostrophe | The device, usually in poetry, of calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place, thing, or personified abstraction either to begin a poem or to make a dramatic break in thought somewhere within the poem. | 10 | |
| 2915532644 | archetype | A pattern or model of an action (such as lamenting the dead), a character type (rebellious youth), or and image (paradise as a garden) that occurs consistently enough in life and literature to be considered universal. | 11 | |
| 2915532646 | argument | Discourse intended to convince or persuade through appeals to reason or to the emotions, the objective being to influence belief or motivate action. | 12 | |
| 2915532648 | canon | Generally, any group of writing that has been established as authentic; more specifically, those books of the Christian Bible that are accepted as Scripture. This term is used to describe collectively those works of a particular author that have been proven or are considered genuine. Currently cannon is often used to identify the classical and contemporary literature "authorized" by schools and universities as the core of literary study. | 13 | |
| 2915565268 | caricature | Descriptive writing that exaggerates specific features of appearance or personality, usually for a comic effect. | 14 | |
| 2915565269 | colloquial/colloquialism | A word or phrase in everyday use in conversation an informal writing, but sometimes inappropriate in a formal essay. | 15 | |
| 2915565270 | connotation | The associations, images, or impressions carried by a word, as opposed to the word's literal meaning. For example, the word mother means literally "a female parent," but it usually connotes warmth, love, sympathy, security, and nurture. | 16 | |
| 2915565271 | denotation | The precise, literal meaning of a word, without emotional associations or overtones. | 17 | |
| 2915565272 | dialect | The version of a language spoken by the people of a particular region or social group. Differing in vocabulary and grammar as well as in pronunciation, the dialects of language develops when groups of people are separated by natural or social barriers. | 18 | |
| 2915565273 | diction | Word choice. There are two basic standards - not mutually exclusive - by which a speaker or writer's diction is usually judged: clarity and appropriateness. | 19 | |
| 2915602387 | didactic | Poetry, plays, novels and stories whose primary purpose is to guide, instruct, or teach. Since all literature communicates ideas, whether a particular work is didactic or not depends largely on the author's intention, so far as it can be known or inferred by the reader or critic. | 20 | |
| 2915602388 | digression | A portion of speech or written work that interrupts the development of the THEME or PLOT. Although out of place in FORMAL essays and tightly structured PLAYS and stories, digressions are common in loosely structured NARRATIVES, such as EPICS and PICARESQUE novels. | 21 | |
| 2915602389 | epiphany | A moment of revelation or profound insight. In Greek mythology, an epiphany was the sudden revelation to a human being of the hidden or disguised divinity of a god or goddess. The Christian feast of Epiphany commemorates the revelation of Christ's divinity to the three wise men. | 22 | |
| 2915602390 | epithet | An adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing to emphasize a characteristic quality or attribute, such as "lily-livered coward" or "murmuring brook." | 23 | |
| 2915602391 | eulogy | A formal composition or speech in high praise of someone (living or dead) or something. | 24 | |
| 2915602392 | euphemism | a mild expression substitute for one considered too harsh or improper. | 25 | |
| 2915602393 | figurative language | Language that contains figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, personification, and hyperbole. | 26 | |
| 2915602394 | figure of speech | Expressions, such as metaphors, similes, personifications, that make comparisons or associations meant to be taken imaginatively rather than literally. | 27 | |
| 2915602395 | hyperbole | Obvious, extravagant exaggeration or overstatement, not intended to be taken literally, but used figuratively to create humor or emphasis. | 28 | |
| 2915602396 | imagery | The making of "pictures with words". Imagery is often synonymous with figure of speech or figurative language. Imagery appeals to the senses. It evokes a complex of emotional suggestions and communicated mood, tone, and meaning. | 29 | |
| 2915602397 | incongruity | The quality of being incongruous, in any number of ways: of being inharmonious or incompatible or inconsistent. | 30 | |
| 2915602398 | inference/infer | A general conclusion drawn from particulars. | 31 | |
| 2915602399 | inversion | Reversing the normal order of sentence parts. | 32 | |
| 2915602400 | irony (verbal, situational, dramatic) | In the broadest sense, the recognition of the incongruity or difference, between reality and appearance. Verbal irony is the contrast between what is said and what is meant. Situational irony refers to the contrast between what is intended or expected and what actually occurs. Dramatic irony occurs when a character unwittingly makes a remark that the audience is intended to understand as ironic, or in contradiction to the full truth. | 33 | |
| 2915650367 | local color | The use in writing of the physical setting, dialect, customs, and attitudes that typify a particular region. | 34 | |
| 2915650368 | mood | A prevailing emotional attitude in a literary work or in part of a work. Mood is the author's attitude toward the subject or the theme. | 35 | |
| 2915650369 | metaphor (extended, dead, mixed) | A figure of speech, and implied analogy in which one thing is imaginatively compared to or identified with another dissimilar thing. An extended metaphor is sustained throughout the work and functions as a controlling image. A dead metaphor is one that has been used so often it has ceased to be figurative and is taken literally. A mixed metaphor combines tow or more inconsistent metaphors in a single expression, often resulting in unintentional humor. | 36 | |
| 2915650370 | metonymy | A figure of speech that substitutes the name of a related object, person, or idea for the subject at hand. | 37 | |
| 2915650371 | motif | In literature, a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation that appears in various works or the same work. | 38 | |
| 2915650372 | narrative | A recounting of a series of actual or fictional events in which some connection between the events is established or implied. | 39 | |
| 2915650373 | oxymoron | A figure of speech in which two contradictory words or phrases are combined in a single expression, giving an effect of a condensed paradox. | 40 | |
| 2915650374 | parable | A short tale illustrating a moral lesson. | 41 | |
| 2915650375 | paradox | A statement that, while apparently self-contradictory, is nonetheless essentially true. | 42 | |
| 2915650376 | parallelism | The technique of showing that words, phrases, clauses, or larger structures are comparable in content and importance by placing them side by side and making them similar in form. | 43 | |
| 2915650377 | parody | A composition that ridicules another composition by imitating and exaggerating aspects of its content, structure, and style, accomplishing in words what caricature achieves in drawing. | 44 | |
| 2915650378 | pathetic fallacy | A term coined by John Ruskin to criticize the use of PERSONIFICATION, in which human emotions are attributed to nature. Although many poets use this device, Ruskin found it a form of false emotionalism. | 45 | |
| 2915650379 | plagiarism | Using another writer's ideas or words as one's own. Plagiarism, which comes from a Latin word meaning "to kidnap," ranges from deliberate literary theft to inept paraphrasing to unconscious borrowing. From a legal standpoint the term is defined as "demonstrable use of matter plainly taken from another without credit." | 46 | |
| 2915650380 | point of view | The vantage point, or stance, from which a story is told, the eye and mind through which the action is perceived and filtered; sometimes called narrative perspective. First person or third person. | 47 | |
| 2915650381 | prose | In the broadest sense, all forms of ordinary writing and speech lacking the sustained and regular rhythmic patterns found in POETRY. Prose is characterized by the sort of plain, straightforward statement found in everyday speech. It is the language of ESSAYS, SHORT STORIES and NOVELS. | 48 | |
| 2915650382 | rhetoric | The art of persuasion, in speaking or writing. Rhetoric originated in ancient Greece as principles for orators (rhetors) to follow in "discovering all the possible means of persuading in any given case or situation." the rhetorical process included five stages-Invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. | 49 | |
| 2915650383 | sarcasm | Harsh, cutting, personal remarks to or about someone, not necessarily ironic. | 50 | |
| 2915650384 | satire | A term used to describe any form of LITERATURE that blends ironic HUMOR and WIT with criticism for the purpose of ridiculing folly, vice, stupidity-the whole range of human foibles and frailties-in individuals and institutions. | 51 | |
| 2915650385 | stream of consciousness | A method and a subject matter of NARRATIVE FICTION that attempts to represent the inner workings of a Character's mind at all levels of awareness, to re-create the continuous, chaotic flow of half-formed and discontinuous thoughts, memories, sense impressions, random associations, images, feelings, and reflections that constitute a character's "consciousness." | 52 | |
| 2915650386 | synecdoche | A FIGURE OF SPEECH in which a part of something stands for the whole thing. In the expression "I've got wheels," wheels stand for the whole vehicle. | 53 | |
| 2915650387 | symbolism | The conscious and artful use of SYMBOLS, objects, actions, or CHARACTERS meant to be taken both literally and as representative of some higher, more complex and abstract significance that lies beyond ordinary meaning. | 54 | |
| 2915650388 | syntax | The arrangement and grammatical relation of words, phrases, and clauses in sentences; the ordering of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. | 55 | |
| 2915650389 | tone | The reflection in a work of the author's attitude toward his or her SUBJECT, CHARACTERS, and readers. Tone in writing is comparable to tone of voice in speech and may be described as brusque, friendly, imperious, and teasing and so on. | 56 | |
| 2915650390 | understatement | A type of verbal IRONY in which something is purposely represented as being far less important than it actually is; also called meiosis. | 57 | |
| 2915650391 | voice | A term used in LITERARY CRITICISM to identify the sense a written work conveys to a reader of its writer's attitude, personality, and character. | 58 | |
| 2915728761 | affect | (v) to assume, pretend to have, put on, imitate, fake | 59 | |
| 2915728762 | affected | (adj) artificial, pretentious, unnatural | 60 | |
| 2915728763 | appeals to | ethos: Speakers and writers appeal to ethos, or character, to demonstrate that they are credible and trustworthy. Appeals to ethos often emphasize shared values. In some instances, a speaker's reputation immediately establishes ethos. logos: Speakers and writers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering clear, rational ideas. Ideas are supported logically with examples, facts, statistics, or expert testimony. pathos: Speakers and writers appeal to pathos, or emotion by using words with strong connotations, vivid concrete description, and figurative language. | 61 | |
| 2915728764 | cadence | (n) rhythm, lilt, intonation, inflection, tone | 62 | |
| 2915728765 | clause | a grammatical unit that contains both a subject and a verb. An independent clause expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a sentence. A dependent, or subordinate clause cannot stand alone as a sentence and must be accompanied by an independent clause. The point that you want to consider is the question of what or why the author subordinates one element to the other. You should also become aware of making effective use of subordination in your own writing. | 63 | |
| 2915728766 | subordinate clause | Like all clauses, this work group contains both a subject and a verb (plus any accompanying phrases or modifiers), but unlike the independent clause, the subordinate clause cannot stand alone; it does not express a complete thought. Also called a dependent clause, the subordinate clause depends on a main / independent clause to complete its meaning. Easily recognized key words and phrases usually begin these clauses - for example: although, because, unless, if, even though, sense, as soon as, while, who, when where, how, and that. | 64 | |
| 2915728767 | homily | This term literally means "sermon," but more informally, it can include any serious talk, speech, or lecture involving moral or spiritual advice. | 65 | |
| 2915728768 | loose sentence | A type of sentence in which the main idea (independent clause) comes first, followed by dependent grammatical units such as phrases and clauses. If a period were placed at the end of the independent clause, the clause would be a complete sentence. A work containing many loose sentences often seems informal, relaxed, and conversational. Generally loose sentences create loose style. | 66 | |
| 2915728769 | periodic sentence | A sentence that presents its central meaning in a main clause at the end. This independent clause is preceded by a phrase or clause that cannot stand alone. For example: "Ecstatic with my AP score, I let out a loud, joyful shout!" The effect of a periodic sentence is to add emphasis and structural variety. It is also a much stronger sentence than a loose sentence. | 67 | |
| 2915728770 | pedantic | (adj) describes words, phrases, or general tone that is overly scholarly, academic, or bookish. | 68 | |
| 2915728771 | discourse or rhetorical modes | This is flexible term (sometimes referred to as modes of discourse) describes the variety, the conventions, and the purposes of the major kinds of writing. The four most common rhetorical modes and their purposes are as follows: 1) The purpose of exposition (or expository writing) is to explain and analyze information by presenting an idea, relevant evidence, and appropriate discussion. The AP language exam questions are frequently expository topics. 2) The purpose of argumentation is to prove the validity of an idea, r point of view, by presenting sound reasoning, discussion, and argument that thoroughly convince the reader. Persuasive writing is a type of argumentation having an additional aim of urging some form of action. 3) The purpose of description is to describe. Sometimes an author engages all five senses in description; good descriptive writing can be sensuous and picturesque. Descriptive writing may be straight forward and objective or highly emotional and subjective. 4) The purpose of narration is to tell a story or narrate an event or series of events. This writing mode frequently uses the tools of descriptive writing. | 69 | |
| 2915728772 | syllogism | From the Greek for "reckoning together," a syllogism (or syllogistic reasoning or syllogistic logic) is a deductive system of formal logic that presents two premises (the first one called "major" and the second "minor") that inevitably lead to a sound conclusion. A frequently cited example proceeds as follows: major premise- All men are mortal. minor premise- Socrates is a man. conclusion- Therefore, Socrates is mortal. A syllogism's conclusion is valid only if each of the two premises is valid. Syllogisms may also present the specific idea first ("Socrates") and the general second ("All men"). | 70 | |
| 2915743491 | Thesis | In expository writing, the thesis statement is the sentence or group of sentences that directly expresses the author's opinion, purpose, meaning, or position. Expository writing is usually judged by analyzing how accurately, effectively, and thoroughly a writer has proved the thesis. | 71 |
