Grapvine-Colleyville Independent School District
Colleyville Heritage High School

LITERARY VOCABULARY

PreAP/AP LITERARY TERMS

Terms will be introduced on the grade level under which they are listed. Terms will carry over to each grade level. Therefore, students are expected to be familiar with terms from the grade level(s) below, as well as be introduced to new terms for their particular grade level.


PreAP English I

PreAP English II

AP English III

AP English IV

Allegory

Alliteration

Allusion

Anaphora

Anecdote

Antagonist

Aside

Assonance

Autobiography

Ballad

Biography

Blank Verse

Character

Characterization

Climax

Colloquial

Conclusion

Concrete Poetry

Conflict

Connotation

Consonance

Couplet

Denotation

Denoument

Dialogue

Diction

Enjambment

Epic

Exposition

Falling Action

Figurative Language

Flashback

Foil

Foreshadowing

Free Verse

Genre

Haiku

Hyperbole

Iamb

Imagery

Inference

Irony –

Verbal, Situational, Dramatic

Lyric Poem

Metaphor

Meter

Mood

Myth

Narrative Poem

Ode

Onomatopeia

Paradox

Parallel Structure

Pentameter

Personification

Plot

Point of View –

Omniscient, Limited

Protagonist

Pun

Quatrain

Resolution

Rhyme

Rhyme Scheme

Rhythm

Rising Action

Sarcasm

Setting

Simile

Soliloquy

Sonnet

Stanza

Suspense

Symbolism

Syntax

Theme

Tone

Tragedy

 

 

 

 

Ambiguity

Analogy

Anaphora

Antithesis

Apostrophe

Catastrophe

Conceit

Dramatic Monologue

Elegy

Ethos

Foot

Juxtapoistion

Logos

Motif

Oxymoron

Parable

Parody

Pathos

Rhetoric

Rhetorical Question

Satire

Stereotype

Style

Syllogism

Tragedy

Antithesis

Aphorism

Epigraph

Epithet

Euphemism

Figure of Speech

Jargon

Local Color

Metonymy

Pathetic Fallacy

Rhetoric

Rhetorical Question

Synecdoche

Synethesia

Understatement

 

Anapest

Asyndeton

Cacaphony/Euphony

Caesura

Carpe Diem

Chiasmus

Dactyl

Didactic

Farce

Heroic Couplet

In Medias Res

Metonymy

Pastoral

Polysyndeton

Romance

Saga

Spondee

Theatre of the Absurd

Trochee