The Glossary of Literary Terms for the AP English Literature and Composition Test
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| 13847664221 | Abstract | Complex, discusses intangible qualities like good and evil, seldom uses examples to support its points. | 0 | |
| 13847664222 | Academic | Dry and rhetorical writing; sucking all the life out of its subject with analysis. | 1 | |
| 13847664223 | Accent | In poetry, the stressed portion of a word. | 2 | |
| 13847664224 | Aesthetic | Appealing to the senses; a coherent sense of taste. | 3 | |
| 13847664225 | Allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself. | 4 | |
| 13847664226 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. | 5 | |
| 13847664227 | Allusion | A reference to another work or famous figure. | 6 | |
| 13847664228 | Anachronism | "Misplaced in time." An aspect of a story that doesn't belong in its supposed time setting. | 7 | |
| 13847664229 | Analogy | A comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship. | 8 | |
| 13847664230 | Anecdote | A Short Narrative | 9 | |
| 13847664231 | Antecedent | The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to. | 10 | |
| 13847664232 | Anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects are given human characteristics. Often confused with personification. | 11 | |
| 13847664233 | Anticlimax | Occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. | 12 | |
| 13847664234 | Antihero | A protagonist who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, or any number of other unsavory qualities. | 13 | |
| 13847664235 | Aphorism | A short and usually witty saying. | 14 | |
| 13847664236 | Apostrophe | A figure of speech wherein the speaker talks directly to something that is nonhuman. | 15 | |
| 13847664237 | Archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. | 16 | |
| 13847664238 | Aside | A speech (usually just a short comment) made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage. | 17 | |
| 13847664239 | Aspect | A trait or characteristic | 18 | |
| 13847664240 | Assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds: "Old king Cole was a merry old soul." | 19 | |
| 13847664241 | Atmosphere | The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene | 20 | |
| 13847664242 | Ballad | A long, narrative poem, usually in meter and rhyme. Typically has a naive folksy quality. | 21 | |
| 13847664243 | Bathos | Writing strains for grandeur it can't support and tries too hard to be a tear jerker. | 22 | |
| 13847664244 | Pathos | Writing evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy. | 23 | |
| 13847664245 | Black humor | The use of disturbing themes in comedy. | 24 | |
| 13847664246 | Bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. | 25 | |
| 13847664247 | Burlesque | Broad parody, one that takes a style or form and exaggerates it into ridiculousness. | 26 | |
| 13847664248 | Cacophony | In poetry, using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds. | 27 | |
| 13847664249 | Cadence | The beat or rhythm or poetry in a general sense. | 28 | |
| 13847664250 | Canto | The name for a section division in a long work of poetry. | 29 | |
| 13847664251 | Caricature | A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality. | 30 | |
| 13847664252 | Catharsis | Drawn from Aristotle's writings on tragedy. Refers to the "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences during a play | 31 | |
| 13847664253 | Chorus | In Greek drama, the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. | 32 | |
| 13847664254 | Classic | Typical, or an accepted masterpiece. | 33 | |
| 13847664255 | Coinage (neologism) | A new word, usually one invented on the spot. | 34 | |
| 13847664256 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "school-book" English. | 35 | |
| 13847664257 | Complex (Dense) | Suggesting that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words; subtleties and variations; multiple layers of interpretation; meaning both explicit and implicit | 36 | |
| 13847664258 | Conceit (Controlling Image) | A startling or unusual metaphor, or to a metaphor developed and expanded upon several lines. | 37 | |
| 13847664259 | Denotation | A word's literal meaning. | 38 | |
| 13847664260 | Connotation | Everything other than the literal meaning that a word suggests or implies. | 39 | |
| 13847664261 | Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings) | 40 | |
| 13847664262 | Couplet | A pair of lines that end in rhyme | 41 | |
| 13847664263 | Decorum | A character's speech must be styled according to her social station, and in accordance to the situation. | 42 | |
| 13847664264 | Diction | The words an author chooses to use. | 43 | |
| 13847664265 | Syntax | The ordering and structuring of words. | 44 | |
| 13847664266 | Dirge | A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, depressed, and melancholy | 45 | |
| 13847664267 | Dissonance | Refers to the grating of incompatible sounds. | 46 | |
| 13847664268 | Doggerel | Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme, like limericks. | 47 | |
| 13847664269 | Dramatic Irony | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not | 48 | |
| 13847664270 | Dramatic Monologue | When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience. | 49 | |
| 13847664271 | Elegy | A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner. | 50 | |
| 13847664272 | Elements | Basic techniques of each genre of literature | 51 | |
| 13847664273 | Enjambment | The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. | 52 | |
| 13847664274 | Epic | A very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; typically deal with glorious or profound subject matter. | 53 | |
| 13847664275 | Epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. | 54 | |
| 13847664276 | Euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. | 55 | |
| 13847664277 | Euphony | When sounds blend harmoniously. | 56 | |
| 13847664278 | Explicit | To say or write something directly and clearly. | 57 | |
| 13847664279 | Farce | Extremely broad humor; in earlier times, a funny play or a comedy. | 58 | |
| 13847664280 | Feminine rhyme | Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Properly, the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. | 59 | |
| 13847664281 | Foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast. | 60 | |
| 13847664282 | Foot | The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by a combination of two or three syllables, either stressed or unstressed. | 61 | |
| 13847664283 | Foreshadowing | An event of statement in a narrative that in miniature suggests a larger event that comes later. | 62 | |
| 13847664284 | Free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern | 63 | |
| 13847664285 | Genre | A sub-category of literature. | 64 | |
| 13847664286 | Gothic | A sensibility that includes such features as dark, gloomy castles and weird screams from the attic each night. | 65 | |
| 13847664287 | Hubris | The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 66 | |
| 13847664288 | Hyperbole | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement. | 67 | |
| 13847664289 | Implicit | To say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly. | 68 | |
| 13847664290 | In media res | Latin for "in the midst of things," i.e. beginning an epic poem in the middle of the action. | 69 | |
| 13847664291 | Interior Monologue | Refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; tends to be coherent. | 70 | |
| 13847664292 | Inversion | Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. | 71 | |
| 13847664293 | Irony | A statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean; uses an undertow of meaning, sliding against the literal a la Jane Austen. | 72 | |
| 13847664294 | Lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. | 73 | |
| 13847664295 | Lampoon | A satire. | 74 | |
| 13847664296 | Loose sentence | A sentence that is complete before its end: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh. | 75 | |
| 13847664297 | Periodic Sentence | A sentence that is not grammatically complete until it has reached it s final phrase: Despite Barbara's irritation at Jack, she loved him. | 76 | |
| 13847664298 | Lyric | A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world. | 77 | |
| 13847664299 | Masculine rhyme | A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (regular old rhyme) | 78 | |
| 13847664300 | Meaning | What makes sense, what's important. | 79 | |
| 13847664301 | Melodrama | A form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain mean and rotten, and the heroine oh-so-pure. | 80 | |
| 13847664302 | Metaphor | A comparison or analogy that states one thing IS another. | 81 | |
| 13847664303 | Simile | A comparison or analogy that typically uses like or as. | 82 | |
| 13847664304 | Metonymy | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. | 83 | |
| 13847664305 | Nemesis | The protagonist's arch enemy or supreme and persistent difficulty. | 84 | |
| 13847664306 | Objectivity | Treatment of subject matter in an impersonal manner or from an outside view. | 85 | |
| 13847664307 | Subjectivity | A treatment of subject matter that uses the interior or personal view of a single observer and is typically colored with that observer's emotional responses. | 86 | |
| 13847664308 | Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean | 87 | |
| 13847664309 | Opposition | A pairing of images whereby each becomes more striking and informative because it's placed in contrast to the other one. | 88 | |
| 13847664310 | Oxymoron | A phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction. | 89 | |
| 13847664311 | Parable | A story that instructs. | 90 | |
| 13847664312 | Paradox | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself, but on closer inspection, does not. | 91 | |
| 13847664313 | Parallelism | Repeated syntactical similarities used for effect. | 92 | |
| 13847664314 | Paraphrase | To restate phrases and sentences in your own words. | 93 | |
| 13847664315 | Parenthetical phrase | A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail. | 94 | |
| 13847664316 | Parody | The work that results when a specific work is exaggerated to ridiculousness. | 95 | |
| 13847664317 | Pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature or even more specifically, one about shepherds. | 96 | |
| 13847664318 | Persona | The narrator in a non first-person novel. | 97 | |
| 13847664319 | Personification | When an inanimate object takes on human shape. | 98 | |
| 13847664320 | Plaint | A poem or speech expressing sorrow. | 99 | |
| 13847664321 | Point of View | The perspective from which the action of a novel is presented. | 100 | |
| 13847664322 | Omniscient | A third person narrator who sees into each character's mind and understands all the action going on. | 101 | |
| 13847664323 | Limited Omniscient | A Third person narrator who generally reports only what one character sees, and who only reports the thoughts of that one privileged character. | 102 | |
| 13847664324 | Objective | A thrid person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera. Does not know what the character is thinking unless the character speaks it. | 103 | |
| 13847664325 | First person | A narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale from his or her point of view. | 104 | |
| 13847664326 | Stream of Consciousness | Author places the reader inside the main character's head and makes the reader privy to all of the character's thoughts as they scroll through her consciousness. | 105 | |
| 13847664327 | Prelude | An introductory poem to a longer work of verse | 106 | |
| 13847664328 | Protagonist | The main character of a novel or play | 107 | |
| 13847664329 | Pun | The usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings | 108 | |
| 13847664330 | Refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 109 | |
| 13847664331 | Requiem | A song of prayer for the dead. | 110 | |
| 13847664332 | Rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. | 111 | |
| 13847664333 | Rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. | 112 | |
| 13847664334 | Satire | Attempts to improve things by pointing out people's mistakes in the hope that once exposed, such behavior will become less common. | 113 | |
| 13847664335 | Soliloquy | A speech spoken by a character alone on stage, meant to convey the impression that the audience is listening to the character's thoughts. | 114 | |
| 13847664336 | Stanza | A group of lines roughly analogous in function in verse to the paragraphs function in prose. | 115 | |
| 13847664337 | Stock characters | Standard or cliched character types. | 116 | |
| 13847664338 | Subjunctive Mood | A grammatical situation involving the words "if" and "were," setting up a hypothetical situation. | 117 | |
| 13847664339 | Suggest | To imply, infer, indicate. | 118 | |
| 13847664340 | Summary | A simple retelling of what you've just read. | 119 | |
| 13847664341 | Suspension of disbelief | The demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with their imagination. | 120 | |
| 13847664342 | Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. | 121 | |
| 13847664343 | Technique | The methods and tools of the author. | 122 | |
| 13847664344 | Theme | The main idea of the overall work; the central idea. | 123 | |
| 13847664345 | Thesis | The main position of an argument. The central contention that will be supported. | 124 | |
| 13847664346 | Tragic flaw | In a tragedy, this is the weakness of a character in an otherwise good (or even great) individual that ultimately leads to his demise. | 125 | |
| 13847664347 | Travesty | A grotesque parody | 126 | |
| 13847664348 | Truism | A way-too obvious truth | 127 | |
| 13847664349 | Unreliable narrator | When the first person narrator is crazy, a liar, very young, or for some reason not entirely credible | 128 | |
| 13847664350 | Utopia | An idealized place. Imaginary communities in which people are able to live in happiness, prosperity, and peace. | 129 | |
| 13847664351 | Zeugma | The use of a word to modify two or more words, but used for different meanings. He closed the door and his heart on his lost love. | 130 | |
| 13847664352 | Ode | A poem in praise of something divine or noble | 131 | |
| 13847664353 | Iamb | A poetic foot -- light, heavy | 132 | |
| 13847664354 | Trochee | A poetic foot -- heavy, light | 133 | |
| 13847664355 | Spondee | A poetic foot -- heavy, heavy | 134 | |
| 13847664356 | Pyrrhie | A poetic foot -- light, light | 135 | |
| 13847664357 | Anapest | A poetic foot -- light, light, heavy | 136 | |
| 13847664358 | Ambibranch | A poetic foot -- light, heavy, light | 137 | |
| 13847664359 | Dactyl | A poetic foot -- heavy, light, light | 138 | |
| 13847664360 | Imperfect | A poetic foot -- single light or single heavy | 139 | |
| 13847664361 | Pentameter | A poetic line with five feet. | 140 | |
| 13847664362 | Tetrameter | A poetic line with four feet | 141 | |
| 13847664363 | Trimeter | A poetic line with three feet | 142 | |
| 13847664364 | Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. | 143 | |
| 13847671236 | Archetype | A detail, image, or character type that occurs frequently in literature | 144 | |
| 13847676128 | Cliche | a worn-out idea or overused expression | 145 | |
| 13847683226 | Eponym | A name or noun formed after a person | 146 | |
| 13847688315 | Extended Metaphor | A metaphor developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work. | 147 | |
| 13847693560 | Figurative Language | Uses extensive literary devices, words have different meanings | 148 | |
| 13847701010 | Kenning | A metaphoric compound word or phrase used as a synonym for a common noun | 149 | |
| 13847702529 | Litote | Using understatement to emphasize a point | 150 | |
| 13847705888 | Malapropism | the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one | 151 | |
| 13847708963 | Mixed Metaphor | a combination of two or more incompatible metaphors, which produces a ridiculous effect | 152 | |
| 13847714005 | Overt Personification | Explicit personification | 153 | |
| 13847717587 | Ulterior Personification | Subtle personification | 154 | |
| 13847719862 | Repartee | Quick, witty conversation | 155 | |
| 13847723550 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa | 156 | |
| 13847727605 | Vernacular | Everyday language of ordinary people | 157 | |
| 13847732076 | Black Humor | The use of disturbing themes in comedy. | 158 | |
| 13847733726 | Didactic | Intended to teach | 159 | |
| 13847739439 | Epigraph | A quotation at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme. | 160 | |
| 13847741178 | Epistolary | A piece of literature contained in or carried on by letters | 161 | |
| 13847743953 | Epithet | A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something | 162 | |
| 13847746157 | Folk Tale | A story originating in popular culture, typically passed on by word of mouth. | 163 | |
| 13847747814 | Frame Story | A narrative that sets up a story embedded in the main story | 164 | |
| 13847755884 | Juvenalian Satire | Any bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary persons and institutions that is filled with personal invective, angry moral indignation, and pessimism | 165 | |
| 13847758256 | Melodramatic | Exaggeratedly emotional or sentimental | 166 | |
| 13847763904 | Memoir | An account of the author's personal experiences | 167 | |
| 13847771525 | Morality Play | Medieval drama designed to teach a lesson. The characters were often allegorical and represented virtues or faults. | 168 | |
| 13847773774 | Pastiche | A dramatic, musical, or literary work made up of bits and pieces from other sources | 169 | |
| 13847777427 | Roman a clef | A novel in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional characters | 170 | |
| 13847781756 | Denouement | An outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot | 171 | |
| 13848372661 | Elizabethan/English Sonnet | a sonnet consisting three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg | 172 | |
| 13848377326 | Historical/Traditional Criticism | Focusing on how an author's life was reflected in work | 173 | |
| 13848379019 | Limited Narrator | A narrator who presents the story as it is seen and understood by a single character and restricts information to what is seen, heard, thought, or felt by that one character | 174 | |
| 13848382667 | Objective Narrator | A third person narrator who only reports what would be visible to a camera; thoughts and feelings are only revealed if a character speaks of them | 175 | |
| 13848386236 | Psychological Criticism | Literature expressing an author's feelings | 176 | |
| 13848392151 | Caesura | A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. | 177 | |
| 13848403687 | Dramatic Poem | Any drama written in verse that is meant to be recited | 178 | |
| 13848407426 | Feminine Rhyme | Lines rhymed by their final two syllables | 179 | |
| 13848411083 | Heroic Couplet | A couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentamenter and written in an elevated style | 180 | |
| 13848430351 | Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet | A sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba and of a sestet using any arrangement of two or three additional rhymes, such as cdcdcd or cdecde | 181 | |
| 13848432001 | Limerick | Humorous 5 line rhyming poem | 182 | |
| 13848433789 | Lyric Poem | A poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings or thoughts of a speaker | 183 | |
| 13848435474 | Masculine Poem | Rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words | 184 | |
| 13848440451 | Meter | A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry | 185 | |
| 13848441843 | Occasional verse | A poem written about or for an important event or occasion | 186 | |
| 13848451700 | Prosaic | Dull | 187 | |
| 13848454217 | Slant Rhyme | A rhyming sound that is not exact | 188 | |
| 13848456309 | Sonnet | A verse form consisting of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme | 189 | |
| 13848461736 | Villanelle | A nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain | 190 | |
| 13848472821 | Anaphora | The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses | 191 | |
| 13848474161 | Anastrophe | Inversion of the natural or usual word order | 192 | |
| 13848476071 | Asyndeton | Omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words | 193 | |
| 13848476072 | Auxesis | A gradual increase in intensity of meaning with words arranged in ascending order of force or importance. | 194 | |
| 13848478630 | Chiasmus | A statement consisting of two parallel parts in which the second part is structurally reversed | 195 | |
| 13848480400 | Double Entendre | A statement that has two meanings, one of which is dirty or vulgar | 196 | |
| 13848489556 | Epistrophe | Repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive clauses | 197 | |
| 13848490738 | Erotema | Rhetorical question | 198 | |
| 13848490739 | Exegesis | Critical interpretation | 199 | |
| 13848495073 | Pathetic fallacy | Ascribing feelings to things | 200 | |
| 13848496155 | Polysyndeton | Deliberate use of many conjunctions | 201 | |
| 13848497552 | Rhetorical Strategy | The way an author organizes words, sentences, and overall argument in order to achieve a particular purpose | 202 | |
| 13848500336 | Synchesis | interlocking word order ABAB | 203 | |
| 13848504168 | Adverbial Clause | These clauses tell how, when, where, and to what extent an action is performed These clauses also modify: 1) verbs 2) adjectives 3) other adverbs | 204 | |
| 13848505626 | Appositive | A word or phrase that renames a nearby noun or pronoun. | 205 | |
| 13848509142 | Colon | Separating two independent clauses when one explains the other | 206 | |
| 13848510718 | Dangling Modifier | A word or phrase that modifies a word not clearly stated in the sentence | 207 | |
| 13848514339 | Gerund | A verb form ending in -ing that is used as a noun | 208 | |
| 13848515869 | Loose Sentence | A complex sentence in which the main clause comes first and the subordinate clause follows | 209 | |
| 13848516919 | Paranthetical | A comment that interrupts the immediate subject, often to qualify or explain | 210 | |
| 13848522257 | Participle | A verb form that can be used as an adjective | 211 | |
| 13848525593 | Peroration | The concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech | 212 | |
| 13848528678 | Phoneme | In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit | 213 |
