Playing with Words and Their Meanings

AP Terms List 1- Help!!

Playing with Words and their Meanings:

Tropes (using words in non-literal ways):

Simile- Her breath hit me in the face like a freight train.

Metaphor- Her breath was a freight train that hit me in the face.

Allegory- a sustained metaphor

Conceit- a sustained metaphor

Synecdoche- All hands on deck! (calling something by one of its actualparts)

Metonymy- The suits downtown don’t care.(call something by name of something assoc. w/it)

Idioms- It’s raining cats and dogs.(expressions that don’t translate)

Hyperbole- I could eat 1000 tacos. (extreme exaggeration)

Irony- I love to go to my minimum-wage job.(saying opposite of what you mean)

Litotes- I think it is dead. (after spider is shot with a canon)(deliberate understatement for effect)

Apostrophe- “Oh, sin; you are a powerful foe.” (talking to something/one not there)

Periphrasis- Our fearless leader will see you now. (trade a descriptive phrase for a noun)

Also-talking around something- excessive wordiness

Personification- The wind whispered to me.(non-human/human quality)

Pathetic fallacy- The clouds wept. (giving human emotion to inanimate objects)

Rhetorical Question- What is wrong with you?(don’t answer that)

Synaesthesia- I tasted sweet victory. (using senses in non-standard way)

Paralipsis- I’m not going to talk about Serang. He is such a jerk.(but your pair of lips is still moving)

Allusion- She had the patience of Job.(reference to something famous)

Schemes (changing word order or pattern from standard usage):

Anaphora(parallelism)- I will fight. I will struggle. I will live. I will win.(repeat phrasing)

Zeugma- He refreshed his drink and his courage.(one verb for two things)

Chiasmus- He lives to sleep, he sleeps to live.(reverse order idea/words)

Epistrophe/Epiphora- I don’t expect to win. He shouldn’t expect to win. (same ending of clauses)

Anadiplosis- When I give in, I give in completely. (end of one clause is same as start of next clause) Playing with Sound:

Alliteration- Repeating thebeginning sound of a word, usually a consonant (ten tiny turtles)

Assonance-Repeating a vowel sound (Fleet feet beat the street in the summer heat)

Consonance- Repeating consonant sounds in the middle of words (wacky duck picks locks)

Onomatopoeia- Words that resemble sounds (Crash, boom, bang)

Remembering ‘thos things:

Pathos- appeal to emotion (audience)

Ethos- appeal based on credibility (writer)

Logos- appeal based on logic (message)

Bathos- I am here to talk about human rights and dignity. Wow, look at those legs. (lofty-low)

The Greek Shall Inherit the Earth:

In medias res- in the middle of things (story that starts in the middle)

Deus ex machina- God in the machine (God/s enter story to save hero; also miraculous event)

Others:

Verisimilitude- making it seem real (The old Smith Family Hardware Store on South Main by the courthouse, rather than the hardware store)

Juxtaposition- placing two things side-by-side for effect (usually shows dramatic or ironic differences- church, prison)

Antithesis- see juxtaposition; the opposite of (He is the antithesis of integrity…); also done with words (He loves, she hates)

Asyndeton- phrasing a series of things without conjunctions (I like popcorn shrimp, shrimp burgers, shrimp scampi. Fried shrimp, boiled shrimp, Baked shrimp. I like it all. Shrimp kabobs, shrimp salad, shrimp cocktail.)

Polysyndeton-using too many conjunctions in series (I like fried shrimp and boiled shrimp and popcorn shrimp and I like

shrimp burgers and shrimp kabobs and shrimp salad.)

Aphorism- A catchy statement of belief or position (Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely)

Monologue- long, uninterrupted speech give by one character; Narrative- a narrated account (story); Melodrama- overly dramatic version of something

Logical fallacy-problem with logic; a + b does not = c