Terms commonly found on the AP Literature Test.
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| 5906009465 | alliteration | the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words | 0 | |
| 5906009466 | allusion | a reference in a work of literature to a historical or literary event, person, place or passage outside of the work | 1 | |
| 5906009467 | antithesis | a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas and used for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness | 2 | |
| 5906009468 | apostrophe | a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present | 3 | |
| 5906009469 | assonance | the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds | 4 | |
| 5906009470 | ballad meter | a four-line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four | 5 | |
| 5906009471 | blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter | 6 | |
| 5906009472 | cacophony | a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones | 7 | |
| 5906009473 | caesura | a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause | 8 | |
| 5906009474 | conceit | an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things | 9 | |
| 5906009475 | consonance | the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words | 10 | |
| 5906009476 | couplet | a two-line stanza, usually with end-rhymes the same | 11 | |
| 5906009477 | devices of sound | the techniques of deploying the sound of words | 12 | |
| 5906009478 | diction | choice of words especially with regard to correctness, formality, clearness, or effectiveness | 13 | |
| 5906009479 | didactic poem | a poem which is intended primarily to teach a lesson | 14 | |
| 5906009480 | dramatic poem | a poem which employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieveing poetic ends | 15 | |
| 5906009481 | elegy | a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations upon death or another solemn theme | 16 | |
| 5906009482 | end-stopped | a line with a pause at the end | 17 | |
| 5906009483 | enjambment | the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next | 18 | |
| 5906009484 | extended metaphor | an implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem | 19 | |
| 5906009485 | euphony | a style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate | 20 | |
| 5906009486 | eye rhyme | rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation | 21 | |
| 5906009487 | feminine rhyme | a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as "waken" and "forsaken" and "audition" and "rendition" | 22 | |
| 5906009488 | figurative language | writing that uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning, often in the form of metaphor, irony, or simile | 23 | |
| 5906009489 | free verse | poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical | 24 | |
| 5906009490 | heroic couplet | two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit | 25 | |
| 5906009491 | hyperbole | a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration | 26 | |
| 5906009492 | imagery | the images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work | 27 | |
| 5906009493 | irony | the contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning, or between what might be expected and what actually occurs | 28 | |
| 5906009494 | internal rhyme | rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end | 29 | |
| 5906009495 | lyric poem | any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings | 30 | |
| 5906009496 | masculine rhyme | rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words | 31 | |
| 5906009497 | metaphor | a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term | 32 | |
| 5906009498 | meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. each unit is known as a foot | 33 | |
| 5906009499 | metonymy | a figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself | 34 | |
| 5906009500 | mixed metaphors | the mingling of another metaphor with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous | 35 | |
| 5988170181 | mood | certain feelings or vibes evoked in readers through words and descriptions | 36 | |
| 5906009501 | narrative poem | a non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short | 37 | |
| 5906009502 | octave | an eight-line stanza | 38 | |
| 5906009503 | onomatopoeia | the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning (such as "hiss," "buzz," or "zip") | 39 | |
| 5906009504 | oxymoron | a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression | 40 | |
| 5906009505 | paradox | a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense | 41 | |
| 5906009506 | parallelism | any structure which brings together parallel elements, be these nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, or larger structures to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences are equal in importance | 42 | |
| 5906009507 | paraphrase | a restatement of an idea in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form | 43 | |
| 5906009508 | personification | a kind of metaphor that give inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics | 44 | |
| 5906009509 | poetic foot | a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it | 45 | |
| 5906009510 | pun | a play on words that are identical or similar in sounds but have sharply diverse meanings | 46 | |
| 5906009511 | quatrain | a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes | 47 | |
| 5906009512 | refrain | a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza | 48 | |
| 5906009513 | rhyme | close similarity or identity between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse | 49 | |
| 5906009514 | rhyme royal | a seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter that rhymes ababbcc; used by Chaucer and other medieval poets | 50 | |
| 5906009515 | rhythm | the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables | 51 | |
| 5906009516 | sarcasm | a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Its purpose is to injure or to hurt | 52 | |
| 5906009517 | satire | writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule | 53 | |
| 5906009518 | scansion | a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the type(s) of feet per line | 54 | |
| 5906009519 | sestet | a six-line stanza | 55 | |
| 5906009520 | simile | a directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like," "as," or "than" | 56 | |
| 5906009521 | sonnet | normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem | 57 | |
| 5906009522 | stanza | usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme | 58 | |
| 5906009523 | rhetorical strategy | the management of language for a specific effect | 59 | |
| 5906009524 | structure | the arrangement of materials within a work; the relationships of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work | 60 | |
| 5906009525 | style | the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expressions of an author | 61 | |
| 5906009526 | symbol | something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else | 62 | |
| 5906009527 | synecdoche | a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole | 63 | |
| 5906009528 | syntax | the order of and arrangement of words in a sentence; a sentence's grammatical structure, length, and type | 64 | |
| 5906009529 | tercet | a three-line stanza, often rhyming, that constitutes the core of a variety of poetic expressions | 65 | |
| 5906009530 | terza rima/rhyme | a three-line stanza that rhymes aba, bcb, cdc, etc. | 66 | |
| 5906009531 | theme | the main thought expressed by a work | 67 | |
| 5906009532 | tone | the manner in which an author expressed his or her attitude | 68 | |
| 5906009533 | understatement | the opposite of hyperbole; represents something less than it really is | 69 | |
| 5906009534 | villanelle | a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain | 70 |
