AP Language Vocabulary

a statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains come degree of truth or validity

• irony

• inference

• loose sentence

• paradox

the grammatical or rhetorical framing of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs to give structural similarity

• loose sentence

• narrative

• parallelism

• invective

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch in credulity..."

• metonymy

• narrative

• parallelism

• juxtaposition

jumbo shrimp

• paradox

• irony

• oxymoron

• litotes

imaginative language not meant to be taken literally

• figurative language

• analogy

• apostrophe

• hyperbole

A story or poem where the events and/or characters represent bigger, abstract ideas like religious or political events/people/beliefs

• allegory

• anaology

• personification

• allusion

when something (object, animal, event, person, place, etc.) in a story represents itself but also stands for a bigger idea

• symbolism

• simile

• euphemism

• allusion

a comparison between two things to explain or clarify; inference that if two things are alike in one way, they’ll be alike in other ways

• analogy

• allusion

• hyperbole

• figurative language

saying one thing is something else to show how they’re similar

• metaphor

• simile

• personification

• allegory

comparing two different things using the words like, as, or than to show how they’re similar

• simile

• metaphor

• figurative language

• euphemism