AP Literary Devices Flashcards

7781899846	Litotes	a form of understatement	0
7781899847	Allusion	a reference to something commonly known, often historical, mythic, literary, or religious	1
7781899848	Antithesis	the direct opposite	2
7781899849	Diction	the writer's word choices	3
7781899850	Symbol	generally anything that represents itself and stands for something else	4
8126602817	Allegory	The device of using characters and story elements to represent an abstraction in addition to a literal idea.	5
8126605183	Alliteration	Repetition of sounds especially the initial consonants of words near each other in written work.	6
8126613303	Aphorism	A terse statement of known authorship which expresses a general truth or principle. A sort of folk proverb	7
8126617012	Apostrophe	A figure of speech in which the speaker directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified idea.	8
8126645077	Conceit	A fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphor or surprising analogy between seemingly dissimilar objects.	9
8126649788	Connotation	The non-literal meaning of a word; the implied or suggested meaning.	10
8126653184	Denotation	The literal meaning of a word	11
8126658249	Didactic	Didactic words have the primary purpose of teaching or instructing	12
8239255253	Euphemism	a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept. "Earthly remains" rather than "corpse"	13
8239285336	Figurative Language	Writing or language not meant to be taken literally	14
8239297727	Hyperbole	A figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement	15
8239352109	imagery	Sensory details	16
8239355950	Invective	An emotionally violent, verbal denunciation or attack using strong abusive language	17
8239372556	Metaphor	A figure of speech using implied comparisons of seemingly unlike things	18
8239476587	Metonymy	a figure of speech in which the name for one object is substituted for that of another closely related to it. For example, "The White House declared".... the "White House is substituted for the "president".	19
8239505645	Mood	The prevailing atmosphere or emotional aura of a work (different from tone which involves the writer's attitude).	20
8239595923	Onomatopoeia	A figure of speech in which natural sounds are imitated in the sounds of words.	21
8239611686	Paradox	A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but actually contains some degree of truth. For example, "it was the best of time, it was the worst of times".	22
8239639102	Parallelism	Also called parallel structure. Refers to grammatical or rhetorical framing of words phrases, sentences or paragraphs to give structural similarity. For example, "It was the best of times, it was the worse of times".	23
8239669510	Anaphora	a sub type of parallelism, with the exact repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive lines. MLK uses anaphora in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.	24
8239693617	Pedantic	An adjective that describes words or phrases that are overly scholarly, academic, or bookish	25
8239717846	Personification	Figurative language in which the author describes concepts, animals, or inanimate objects by endowing them with human attributes or emotions.	26
8239743609	Point of View	The perspective from which the story is told.	27
8239748505	Prose	Common writing style in which the writer generally uses complete sentence structure as opposed to poetry (in which the poet determines the length of the line based on other considerations).	28
8239825419	Repetition	The duplication, either exact or approximate, of any element of language such as sound, word, phrase, clause, sentence, or grammatical pattern.	29
8239846894	Shift	Tonal, point of view, structural change in writing that may signify an important new element.	30
8239865259	Synecdoche	Figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole. For example, "all hands on deck" in which the hands represent the sailors. how about , "wheels" representing your car?	31
8239929756	Synesthesia	When one kind of sensory stimulus evokes the subjective experience of another. In literature synesthesia refers to the use of associating two or more senses to the same image.... "Taste the pain" "Jerry's got the blues today"	32
8239975237	Syntax	The way an author decides to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences.	33
8239990858	Theme	The central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life.	34
8240001858	Tone	An author's attitude toward her material. Can be formed by author's use of diction as well as other techniques.	35
9228623272	Allusion	Example: "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"	36
9228630906	Doppelganger	Example: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	37
9228637911	Litotes	Example: "Not the brightest bulb" or "Not a beauty"	38
9228652837	Inversion	Changing the conventional placement of words (not exclusive to but most common in poetry)	39
9228658363	Portmanteau	Example: "smog" or "brunch"	40
9228687308	Consonance	Repetition of consonant sounds in quick succession (mid-word sounds as well as opening)	41
9228700634	Paradox	Example: "Fair is foul and foul is fair"	42
9228719491	Consonance	Example: "A Quietness distilled As Twilight long begun" (Dickinson)	43
9228736752	Doppelganger	A character who serves as a twin, shadow, or a mirror-image of a protagonist.	44