AP Poetic Terms List

• Alliteration


  Repetition at close intervals of the initial consonant sounds
• Allusion


  A reference explicit or implicit to something in literature, incl. the Bible, or history
• Anadiplosis


  A figure of repetition where the last word in the prior line is used as the first word in the following line
• Anaphora


  Figure of repetition when the first word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive lines
• Anastrophe


  Inversion of the natural word order; sounds awkward or emphatic
• Antimetabole


  Figure of repetition when words are repeated in successive lines in reverse grammatical order
• Apostrophe


  Figure of speech in which someone absent/dead/something non-human is addressed as if alive and present with the capacity to reply
• Assonance


  Repetition of similar vowel sounds
• Asyndeton


  Deliberate omission of conjunctions between a series of related clauses, creating a hurried rhythm
• Ballad


  A narrative poem that includes a repeated stanza/refrain; often set to music; usually in quatrains
• Blank Verse


  Unrhymed iambic pentameter
• Cacophony


  Harsh or unmelodious, discordant sounding words
• Caesura


  Speech pause occurring within a line (comma, dash, period, semicolon, colon)
• Carpe Diem


  Latin for "seize the day"; theme found frequently in lyric poetry
• Chiasmus


  The reversal of grammatical structures in successive lines, but does not involve the repetition of words
• Connotation


  What a word suggests beyond its basic definition; emotional associations surrounding a word
• Consonance


  The repetition of the final consonant sounds
• Couplet


  Two successive lines in a poem usually in the same meter, linked by rhyme
• Denotation


  Dictionary meaning of a word; literal meaning
• Diction


  The poet's choice of words of phrases
• Dirge

  A poem of lament; a commemoration for the dead
• Elegy


  A poem of serious reflection; usually a commemoration of someone who has died
• End-stopped line


  A line that ends with a natural speech pause
• Enjambment


  The continuation of reading one line of a poem to the next with no pause; also known as a run-on line
• Epanalepsis


  Figure of repetition where a word that started the line is repeated at the end of the line
• Epiphany


  A revealing moment in which the speaker experiences a deep realization about themselves
• Epistrophe


  Figure of repetition where a word or group of words is repeated at the end of successive lines
• Epithet


  A descriptive name or title
• Euphemism


  Using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one
• Euphony


  Smooth, pleasant sounds that are pleasing to the ear
• Feminine Ending

  An unstressed extra syllable at the end of a line of iambic pentameter
• Fixed Form


  A traditional pattern that applies to the whole poem (limerick, villanelles, sestinas, and many others)
• Free Verse


  Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical
• Heroic Couplet


  A pair of lines in rhymed iambic pentameter used mostly by Old English poets
• Hexameter


  A line containing six feet
• Hyperbole


  A boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true
• Imagery


  Representation through language of sense experience
• Irony


  A situation or a use of language involving some kind of incongruity or discrepancy
• Litote


  Deliberate use of understatement made by using a double negative
• Masculine Ending


  A stressed extra syllable at the end of a line of iambic pentameter