McMillan's AP Lit poetry terms
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| 7211416965 | ballad | a song-like narrative poem | 0 | |
| 7211416966 | elegy | a lyric poem of mourning | 1 | |
| 7211416967 | free verse | unrhymed poetry with no rules | 2 | |
| 7211416968 | limerick | a humerous, rhyming 5-line poem; a-a-b-b-a | 3 | |
| 7211416969 | narrative | a poem that tells a story | 4 | |
| 7211416970 | ode | a stately, serious, and elaborate lyrical poem, often praising or offering commentary on a person, place, or thing | 5 | |
| 7211416971 | pastoral | a poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way | 6 | |
| 7211416972 | sonnet | a 14-line lyric poem written in iambic pentameter | 7 | |
| 7211416973 | Shakespearean (English) Sonnet | 3 quatrains and a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg | 8 | |
| 7211416974 | Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet | an octave and a sestet: abbaabba cdcdcd | 9 | |
| 7211416975 | terza rima | 3-line stanzas in chain rhyme of aba, bcb, cdc, ded; no limit on number of lines | 10 | |
| 7211416976 | villanelle | a poetic form with five tercets and a quatrain, no set meter, and only two rhyme schemes, uses refrains | 11 | |
| 7211416977 | scansion | the process of analyzing a poem's meter and rhythm | 12 | |
| 7211416978 | meter | arrangement of accented and unaccented syllables in a line of poetry | 13 | |
| 7211416979 | foot | a basic repeated sequence of meter comprised of two or more accented or unaccented syllables | 14 | |
| 7211416980 | iambic | 2 syllable foot of unstressed, stressed | 15 | |
| 7211416989 | blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter (meant to mimic actual speech patterns) | 16 | |
| 7211416990 | end-stopped | a line of poetry in which the reader is meant to pause at the end of the line | 17 | |
| 7211416991 | enjambment | a line of poetry which is not end-stopped, in which the thought continues into the next line without any pause | 18 | |
| 7211416992 | inversion | a change in what would be considered "normal" syntax by the inverting of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase | 19 | |
| 7211416993 | stanza | a grouping of lines of poetry | 20 | |
| 7211416994 | couplet | two lines | 21 | |
| 7211416995 | rhyming couplet | two lines with end rhyme | 22 | |
| 7211416996 | heroic couplet | two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter | 23 | |
| 7211416997 | tercet/triplet | three lines | 24 | |
| 7211416998 | quatrain | four lines | 25 | |
| 7211416999 | sestet | six lines | 26 | |
| 7211417000 | octave | eight lines | 27 | |
| 7211417001 | caesura | a purposeful pause in a poem, sometimes mid-line | 28 | |
| 7211417002 | parallelism | repetition of the syntactical structure of a line or phrase | 29 | |
| 7211417003 | rhyme scheme | the controlling pattern or sequence in which rhyme occurs in a poem | 30 | |
| 7211417004 | internal rhyme | rhyme that occurs within the middle lines of poetry, such as assonance or consonance | 31 | |
| 7211417005 | end rhyme | rhyme that occurs at the end lines of poetry; denoted with letters of the alphabet to signify which lines (abba abba) | 32 | |
| 7211417006 | approximate rhyme | "almost" rhyming; AKA near rhyme or slant rhyme | 33 | |
| 7211417007 | repetition | the reiterating of a word or phrase within a poem | 34 | |
| 7211417008 | alliteration | repetition of initial consonant sounds | 35 | |
| 7211417009 | assonance | repetition of internal vowel sounds | 36 | |
| 7211417010 | consonance | repetition of final consonant sounds | 37 | |
| 7211417011 | onomatopoeia | words that sound like the idea or thing they represent | 38 | |
| 7211417012 | euphony | lines of poetry that are "musically pleasant" to the ear | 39 | |
| 7211417013 | cacophony | lines of poetry that are "musically unpleasant" to the ear | 40 | |
| 7211417014 | figurative language | words or phrases that are not intended to be interpreted literally | 41 | |
| 7211417015 | apostrophe | spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea | 42 | |
| 7211417016 | conceit | an elaborate extended metaphor (the whole poem compares one thing to another) | 43 | |
| 7211417017 | euphemism | substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one | 44 | |
| 7211417018 | hyperbole | a deliberate and purposeful exaggeration | 45 | |
| 7211417019 | litotes | a positive is stated by negating its opposite; a form of understatement. e.g. not a bad idea | 46 | |
| 7211417020 | metaphor | a comparison of two seemingly unlike things that does not use comparative words | 47 | |
| 7211417021 | metonymy | one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. e.g. the pen is mightier than the sword | 48 | |
| 7211417022 | personification | nonhuman things or abstract ideas are given to human attributes | 49 | |
| 7211417023 | simile | a comparison of two seemingly unlike things that uses comparative words (such, like, as) | 50 | |
| 7211417024 | symbol | anything that represents itself but also stands for a more abstract idea | 51 | |
| 7211417025 | synecdoche | a part is used to designate the whole or the whole is used to designate a part. e.g. "all hands on deck," "the US beat Russia in the game" | 52 | |
| 7211417026 | imagery | descriptive language that relies on at least one of the five senses | 53 | |
| 7211417027 | diction | word choice; phrasing | 54 | |
| 7211417028 | speaker | the voice "telling" the poem | 55 | |
| 7211417029 | trochaic | 2 syllable foot of stressed, unstressed | 56 | |
| 7211417030 | juxtapose | to set two contrasting things/ideas next to each other to emphasize a quality about one or both of them | 57 | |
| 7211417031 | anaphora | a repetition of words or phrases at the beginnings of successive clauses | 58 | |
| 7211417032 | allegory | a story that hides or represents another story with a powerful political or moral meaning | 59 |
