AP Lang & Comp Terms

1. AP Lang & Comp Terms Batch #1 (Review Game Version)

2. #1 Identify the device being used: “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” (The Wizard of Oz)

3. #1 Answer • Polysyndeton • The device of repeating conjunctions in close succession.

4. #2 Identify the device being used: “Of the people, by the people, for the people” (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address)

5. Answer #2 • Epistrophe • The repetition of a word or group of words at the end of successive phrases, clauses, verses, or sentences

6. #3 Identify the term/device: A pleasing arrangement of sounds

7. Answer #3 • Euphony

8. #4 Identify the device being used: “Heard melodies are sweet.” (John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)

9. Answer #4 • Synaesthesia • The use of one kind of sensory experience to describe another

10. #5 Identify the device being used: “All the other lads there were / Were Itching to have a bash.” (Philip Larkin, “Send No Money”)

11. Answer #5 • Colloquialism • An informal or slang expression, especially in the context of formal writing

12. #6 Identify the term/device: The atmosphere of a work of literature; the emotion created by the work

13. Answer #6 Mood

14. #7 Identify the device being used: Saying “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide”

15. Answer #7 • Euphemism • The use of less offensive language to express unpleasant or vulgar ideas, events, or actions

16. #8 Identify the term/device: The person (sometimes a character) who tells a story; the voice assumed by the writer. Not necessarily the author (but it can be).

17. Answer #8 Narrator

18. #9 • The following are examples: • Richard Wright’s Black Boy • Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life • Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl

19. Answer #9 • Autobiography • The narrative of a person’s life, written by that person.

20. #10 Identify the device being used: The moon smiled down at us as we sat by the river.

21. Answer #10 • Personification • The use of human characteristics to describe animals, objects, or ideas.

22. #11 Identify the term/device: The character an author assumes in a written work.

23. Answer #11 Persona

24. #12 Identify the term/device: An author’s individual way of using language to reflect his or her own personality and attitudes. An author communicates this through tone, diction, and sentence structure.

25. Answer #12 Voice

26. #13 Identify the term/device: The works of Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Bronte and other great writers.

27. Answer #13 Canon • An evolving group of literary works considered essential to a culture’s literary tradition.

28. #14 • The following are examples: • Richard the Lionheart • Shoeless Joe Jackson • The Brooklyn Bomber

29. Answer #14 • Epithet • An adjective or phrase that describes a prominent or distinguishing feature of a person or thing

30. #15 Identify the device being used: In Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, the nightmares Lockwood has the night he sleeps in Catherine’s bed prefigure later events in the novel.

31. Answer #15 • Foreshadowing • An author’s deliberate use of hints or suggestions to give a preview of events or themes that do not develop until later in the narrative.

32. #16 Identify the device being used: The ship was crewed by fifty hands.

33. Answer #16 Synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part of an entity is used to refer to the whole (In this case, “hands” alludes to the people—all of the people—manning the ship.)

34. #17 Identify the term/device: A technique of detachment that draws awareness to the discrepancy between words and their meanings, between expectation and fulfillment, or, most commonly, between what is and what seems to be.

35. Answer #17 • Irony (Five types = verbal, situational, romantic, dramatic/tragic, and cosmic)

36. #18 Identify the term/device: Specific facts or examples used to support a claim in a piece of writing.

37. Answer #18 Evidence

38. #19 Identify the device being used: “Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.” (Shakespeare, Sonnet 129)

39. Answer #19 Parallelism • The use of similar grammatical structures or word order in two or more sentences, clauses, or phrases to suggest a comparison or contrast between them.

40. #20 Identify the term/device: The art of persuasion, or the art of speaking or writing well. This involves the study of how words influence audiences.

41. Answer #20 Rhetoric

42. #21 Identify the term/device: The main idea, or principal claim, that is supported in a work of nonfiction.

43. Answer #21 Thesis statement

44. #22 Identify the term/device: The author’s attitude toward the subject or characters of a story or poem, or toward the reader.

45. Answer #22 tone

46. #23 Identify the device being used: Asking the wealthy nations of the world to feed the impoverished nations is like asking people on a full lifeboat to take on more passengers.

47. Answer #23 Analogy • A comparison based on a specific similarity between things that are otherwise unlike, or the inference that if two things are alike in some ways, they will be alike in others. Often analogies draw a comparison between something abstract and something more concrete or easier to visualize.

48. #24 Identify the device being used: “And all men kill the thing they love.” (Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”)

49. Answer #24 Paradox • A statement that seems absurd or even contradictory but that often expresses a deeper truth.

50. #25 Identify the device being used: My teacher is a total psychopath.