Term Examples - AP English

Allegory - George Orwell’s, “Animal Farm,” is an allegory for the Communist Revolution as it

portrays the different characters and emotions of that time.

Alliteration - An animal ate an acidic apple.

Allusion - Clever thinking, Sherlock.

Ambiguity - I love hurting people.

Analogy - You voice is as loud as a rocket blasting off.

Antecedent - I thought I heard something behind me, but I carried on. There it is again.

Antithesis - Money is the root of all evil: poverty is the fruit of all goodness.

Aphorism - Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream. [Khalil Gibran]

Apostrophe - “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.”

Atmosphere - Creepy, Gloomy, Reminiscent

Caricature - He was a small stick of a man, with a smile wide enough to fit the moon.

Colloquialism - You wanna buzz off already, chump?

Conceit - “For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea…” [Shakespeare]

Connotation - You dog! How dare you!

Denotation - Yeah her, she’s a nice chick.

Diction - All of the dead trees in the gloomy forest had rotted into clumps of dirt.

Didactic - “Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan

Euphemism - She recently passed away.

Extended metaphor - “Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus.

Currently I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cart

wheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main

tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.” (Dean Koontz, Seize the

Night. Bantam, 1999

Figurative Language - Her eyes are like the ocean. (Simile, Metaphor, Personification, etc.)

Figure of speech - Splat! (Onomatopoeia, Alliteration, Metaphor, etc.)

Generic conventions - Action movies = explosions / Western movies = cowboys

Genre - Fiction, Drama, Poetry, etc.

Homily - (Father Bill Messenger from Eugene’s Parish delivering message to California’s

Proposition 41 in Los Angeles in 1984)

Hyperbole - That purse weighs more than a house!

Imagery - The boy ran his fingers through the horses smooth mane.

Inference - My mother saw the mud stains left on the carpet, and knew I had snuck out last night.

Invective - The vile, thieving scoundrels, the Wilson’s, were up to there no good, chivalrous acts

once again.

Irony - 1. Oh great! I failed my exam.

2. Did you hear the fire station burnt down yesterday?

3. In Romeo and Juliet, the former thinks Juliet is dead, but the audience know that she

only took a sleeping potion

Litotes - Guess I’m not as young as I used to be.

Loose sentence - I could tell he was upset from his tapping foot and stern expression.

Metaphor - The squirrel’s gaze was hypnotism to the dog’s hungry eyes.

Metonymy - The pen is mightier than the sword.

Mood - Calm and Peaceful, etc.

Narrative - “Animal Farm” by George Orwell

Onomatopoeia - Boom! BANG! Crash!

Oxymoron - Open secret, pretty bad, bright smoke

Paradox - I am nobody.

Parallelism - What goes around comes around. / Easy come, easy go.

Parody - “Spaceballs” Parodies Star Wars trilogy, as well as other sci-fi franchises including

Star Trek, Alien, and the Planet of the Apes films.

Pedantic - Avery did perfect on his AP english assignment, but misspelled one word, and was

greatly deducted.

Periodic sentence - Because they are independent, take care of themselves, and purr, I prefer cats

over dogs.

Personification - The book begged to be ready as its pages glared at me.

Point of view - 1. I shuffled around nervously in my seat as the instructor stared at me.

2. You have to believe in yourself.

3a. They walked to the store and ate and shopped together as they thought happy thoughts.

3b. Jimmy knew exactly what was going on, and he was sad.

Prose - “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be

held by anybody else, these pages must show.” David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Repetition - Come they told me

Pa rum pum pum pum

A new born king to see

Pa rum pum pum pum

Our finest gifts we bring -Little Drummer Boy

Pa rum pum pum pum

Rhetoric - How did this idiot get elected? (Rhetorical Question, Hyperbole, Allusion, etc.)

Rhetorical modes - 1. news article, scientific report, textbook

2. editorial, job application, résumé

3. journal writing, poetry

4. biography, novel, short story

Sarcasm - Not the brightest crayon in the box now, are we?

Satire - Songs of Weird Al Yankovic

Semantics - One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Style - Renaissance or Victorian periods

Subject complement - My face will turn red.

Subordinate clause - Once he smashed the spider

Syllogism - If you know all squares are rectangles and all rectangles are shapes, then you deduce

from this that all squares are shapes.

Symbol - The conch in, “Lord of the Flies,” symbolizes civilization.

Synecdoche - Weary feet in the walk of life.

Synesthesia “In some melodious plot, Of beechen green, Singest of summer in full throated

ease.”

Syntax - I cannot go out = Go out I cannot

Theme - Love and Friendship

Thesis - “In this essay, I will tell you how to make the perfect fruit salad in the world that is not

only tasteful for your taste buds but also healthful for your body”

Tone - Cheerful, Sarcastic, Amused

Transition - Furthermore, then, after that, etc.

Understatement - Saying that I’m excited right now is an understatement!

Wit - “Doesn’t expecting the unexpected make the unexpected expected?”