AP Terms Quiz #2 (30 terms)

Question 1

Ad Hominem

Answer 1

(Latin) means “against the man”; An argument based on the failings of an opponent rather than on the merits of the case(instead of on his arguments).

**Example: **“How can you argue your case for vegetarianism when you are enjoying your steak?”

This clearly shows how a person is attacked instead of being addressed for or against his argument.

Question 2

Allegory

Answer 2

A literary work in which characters, objects, or actions represent abstract ideas, lessons, motifs.

Example: “Animal Farm”, written by George Orwell, is an allegory that uses animals on a farm to describe the overthrow of the last of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution of Russia before WW II. The actions of the animals on the farm are used to expose the greed and corruption of the revolution. It also describes how powerful people can change the ideology of a society. One of the cardinal rules on the farm for the animals is:

“All animals are equal but a few are more equal than others.”

Question 3

Alliteration

Answer 3

Use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse.

**Example: **She sells sea-shells down by the sea-shore.

Question 4

Allusion

Answer 4

A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.

Example: “He was a real Romeo with the ladies.” Referring to Romeo from *Romeo & Juliet. *

Question 5

Ambiguity

Answer 5

An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way. Also, the manner of expression of such an event or situation may be ambiguous. Artful language may be ambiguous. Unintentional ambiguity is usually vagueness.

Example: The meteor in the Scarlet Letter shining through while Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale were standing on the scaffold, = interpreted in many different ways. (as a harbinger for the sins they’ve committed or a shining ray of hope for these sinners)

Question 6

Anachronism: Analepsis/Prolepsis

Answer 6

Anachronism: a Greek word anachronous which means “against time”; Something or someone out of place in terms of historical or chronological context

Example: Act 2 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar”:

“Brutus: Peace! Count the clock.
Cassius: The clock has stricken three.”

The time this play depicts is a point in history dating back to 44 AD. Mechanical clocks referred to in the above-mentioned dialogue had not been invented at that time but were present in Shakespeare’s time. Thus, the mention of a clock = anachronism.

Analepsis: A form of flashback in which earlier parts of a narrative are related to others that have already been narrated

​Example: In the Disney film “Hercules”, Hades’ fate for ruling the world was reached even when the Three Fates have told of what to come of Hercules.
Prolepsis: the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished (flashforward)
**Example: **Oedipus in the Odyssey have been told that he will sleep with his mother and kill his father.

Question 7

Anadiplosis

Answer 7

A Greek word which means “to reduplicate”; Repeated word(s) that occurs when the last word or terms in one sentence, clause, or phrase is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of the next sentence, clause, or phrase.

**Example: **From Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita,

“What I present here is what I remember of the letter, and what I remember of the letter I remember verbatim (including that awful French).

Phrase “what I remember of the letter” = anadiplosis. The writer clearly wants his readers to focus on what he is saying and repeating in these words. The message is further enhanced by the use of the word “verbatim”.

Question 8

Analogy

Answer 8

A comparison of two different things that are similar in some way.

**Example: **​

• Life is like a race. The one who keeps running wins the race and the one who stops to catch a breath loses.
• From Amy Lowell’s poem “Night Clouds”.

“The white mares of the moon rush along the sky
Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass Heavens.”

Analogy between clouds and mares. She compares the movement of the white clouds in the sky at night with that of the white mares on the ground.

Question 9

Anaphora

Answer 9

A rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences.

Example: “Every day, every night, in every way, I am getting better and better”
“My life is my purpose. My life is my goal. My life is my inspiration.”

Question 10

Antecedent

Answer 10

A word, phrase, or clause to which a following pronoun refers.

Example: Our carnivorous friends will not attend the picnic because they despise tofu hotdogs and black bean burgers.

Friends = antecedent; they = personal pronoun.

When Kris sprained his ankle, Coach Ames replaced him with Jasper, a much slower runner.

Kris = antecedent; him = personal pronoun.

Question 11

Aphorism

Answer 11

A brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life.

Example:

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” [William Faulkner]
“Life’s Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” [Benjamin Franklin]

“Life is a tale told by an idiot — full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Shakespeare)

Question 12

Aporia

Answer 12

Expression of doubt (often pretended) by which a speaker appears uncertain as to what he should think, say, or do.
**Example: **“To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.….”

(Hamlet by William Shakespeare)

This is an opening soliloquy of Hamlet in the play. Here, the statement “to be or not to be” is such a question that introduces the uncertainty that characterizes the paragraph.

Question 13

Aposiopesis

Answer 13

A breaking-off of speech, usually due to being overcome by passion, excitement, or fear; derived from a Greek word that means “becoming silent”

Example: “She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll –
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat….”

(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain)

Two examples of aposiopesis in this excerpt. First, the writer pauses at “hold of you I’ll –“, and then at the end of the excerpt, “nothing but the cat”. Both sentences are left incomplete.

Question 14

Appositive

Answer 14

A noun or noun phrase that follows another noun immediately or defines or amplifies its meaning;in order to make a point more clear or to refer to an even more specific component of the noun.

Example:

• The bookshelf, a modern piece of furniture, was moved into the house first.”
• The insect, a large and hairy creature, scared the children as they walked outside.
• My brother, a human garbage disposal, consumed five cheeseburgers in one sitting last night.

Question 15

Apostrophe

Answer 15

A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply.

Example: Jane Taylor uses apostrophe in the well-known nursery rhyme “The Star”:

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.”

A child addresses a star (an imaginary idea).

Or how Mary Shelly uses apostrophe in her novel “Frankenstein”:

“Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.”

Talking to stars, clouds and winds is an apostrophe.

Question 16

Assonance

Answer 16

Repetition of a vowel sound (a e i o u sometimes y) within two or more words in close proximity.

Example: “High five.” or “It’s high time you said good-bye.”

Question 17

Asyndeton

Answer 17

Commas used (with no conjunction) to separate a series of words. The parts are emphasized equally when the conjunction is omitted; in addition, the use of commas with no intervening conjunction speeds up the flow of the sentence. Asyndeton takes the form of X, Y, Z as opposed to X, Y, and Z.

Example: “Without looking, without making a sound, without talking”

(Oedipus at Colonus by Sophecles)

Question 18

Atmosphere vs. Mood

Answer 18

Atmosphere: The ambiance of the text based on the mood; the vehicle for mood.

Example: Children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time:

“It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky.” sets the scary atmosphere in those lines.
Mood: What the author wants or expects the reader to feel by means of the setting, theme, diction, tone, and the events of the text; more direct statement.

Example: Charles Dickens creates a calm and peaceful mood in his novel “Pickwick Papers”:

“The river, reflecting the clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as it flowed noiselessly on.”

The depiction of idyllic scenery imparts a serene and non-violent mood to the readers.

Question 19

Attitude

Answer 19

A person’s consistently favorable or unfavorable evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea.

Example: If I say, “I like singing”, it represents positive thinking towards singing. This attitude is formed because I believe that I like singing, or I feel happy while singing.

Question 20

Audience

Answer 20

Those to whom a speech or piece of writing is addressed or to whom the author wishes to reach.

Example: The audience of Sinners In the Hands of God was a group of very religious Puritans which gave the effect of the speech much more gumption than it would to an audience of a random group of Americans in 2014.

Question 21

Autotelic

Answer 21

composed of two Greek roots: auto (self) and telos (goal); an autotelic activity is one we do for its own sake bc to experience it is the main goal; applied to personality, autotelic denotes an individual who generally does things for their own sake rather than in order to acheive some later external goal;

Containing its own meaning or purpose
or Deriving meaning and purpose from within

Example:

Question 22

Bathos

Answer 22

in Greek it means depth; is a descent in literature in which a poet or writer–striving too hard to be passionate or elevated–falls into trivial or stupid imagery, phrasing, or ideas. Alexander Pope coined the usage to mock the unintentional mishaps of incompetent writers, but later comic authors and poets used bathos intentionally for mirthful effects. One of the most common types of bathos is the humorous arrangement of items so that the listed items descend from grandiosity to absurdity. In this technique, important or prestigious ideas precede an inappropriate or inconsequential item.

Example:

• “In the United States, Usama bin Laden is wanted for conspiracy, murder, terrorism, and unpaid parking tickets.” Many modern humorists like Lewis Grizzard make liberal use of bathos, but the technique is common in older literature as well.
• “A creature Of feature More dark, more dark, more dark than skies, Yea, darkly wise, yea, darkly wise: Darkly wise as a formless fate And if he be great If he be great, then rudely great, Rudely great as a plough that plies, And darkly wise, and darkly wise.”

Question 23

Begging the question

Answer 23

A logical fallacy in which a premise of an argument contains a direct or indirect assumption that the conclusion is true; offering a circular argument; circular reasoning; This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because simply assuming that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly) in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion.

Example:

• “X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true.”
• “The belief in God is universal. After all, everyone believes in God.”

Question 24

Caesura

Answer 24

A pause separating phrases within lines of poetry–an important part of poetic rhythm. The term caesura comes from the Latin “a cutting” or “a slicing.” Some editors will indicate a caesura by inserting a slash (/) in the middle of a poetic line. Others insert extra space in this location or a comma while some don’t indicate the caesura typographically at all.

Example:

At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

Question 25

Canon (literary & fiction)

Answer 25

The Greek word “kanon,” signifying a measuring rod
or a rule, was extended to denote a list or catalogue, then came to be applied
to the list of books in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament which were
designated by church authorities as the genuine Holy Scriptures; term “canon” was later used in a literary application to signify the official collection of literary works; Today, literature students typically use the word canon to refer to those works in anthologies that have come to be considered standard or traditionally included in the classroom and published textbooks. In this sense, “the canon” denotes the entire body of literature traditionally thought to be suitable for admiration and study.

**Example: **

• “the Chaucer canon” and “the Shakespeare canon,”

Question 26

Catharsis

Answer 26

Greek word and it means cleansing; An emotional discharge that brings about a moral or spiritual renewal or welcome relief from tension and anxiety. According to Aristotle, catharsis is the marking feature and ultimate end of any tragic artistic work.

Example:

“Here’s to my love! [Drinks] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. [Falls]“

In “Romeo and Juliet”, Romeo commits suicide by drinking the poison that he erroneously thinks Juliet had tasted too. The audience usually finds themselves crying at this particular moment for several reasons. Primarily because losing a loved one is a feeling that all of us share. Watching or reading such a scene triggers the memories of someone we have lost (either by death or by mere separation) and because we are able to relate to it, we suddenly release the emotions that we have been repressing.

Question 27

Chiasmus

Answer 27

Greek, “cross” or “x”: A literary scheme in which the author introduces words or concepts in a particular order, then later repeats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a “crisscross” pattern.

Example:

• consider the chiasmus that follows: “By day the frolic, and the dance by night.” If we draw the words as a chart, the words form an “x” (hence the word’s Greek etymology, from chi meaning “x”)
• “I lead the life I love; I love the life I lead.”
• “Naked I rose from the earth; to the grave I fall clothed.”

Question 28

Clause

Answer 28

any word-construction containing a nominative and a predicate, (i.e., a subject “doing” a verb). The term clause contrasts with the term phrase. A phrase might contain nouns as appositives or objects, and it might contain verb-like words in the form of participles or gerunds, but it crucially lacks a subject “doing” a verb.

Example:

• “Joe left the building after seeing his romantic rival.”

Clause: Joe left the building
Phrase: after seeing his romantic rival

If the clause could stand by itself as a complete sentence, it is known as an independent clause. If the clause cannot stand by itself as a complete sentence (typically because it begins with a subordinating conjunction), it is said to be a dependent clause

Question 29

Cliché

Answer 29

French for the stereotype used in printing, signifies an expression
that deviates enough from ordinary usage to call attention to itself
and has been used so often that it is overused.

Example:

• “I beg your pardon” or “sincerely yours” are standard usages that do not call attention to themselves; but “point with pride,” “the eternal verities,” “a wholenew ballgame,” and “lock, stock, and barrel” are accounted as clichés

Cliché rhymes are rhymes that are considered trite or predictable. Cliché rhymes in poetry include love and dove, moon and June, trees and breeze.

Question 30

Colloquial/Colloquialism

Answer 30

Colloquialism: A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing. (ie. slang) Colloquial expressions tend to sneak in as writers, being part of a society, are influenced by the way people speak in that society. Writers use such expressions intentionally too as it gives their works a sense of realism.

**Example: **

• in a fiction story depicting American society, a greeting “what’s up?” between friends will seem more real and appropriate than the formal “How are you?” and “How do you do?”
• to bamboozle – to deceive
  go bananas – go insane or be very angry
  wanna – want to
  gonna – going to
  y’all – you all
  go nuts – go insane or be very angry
  look blue -look sad
  buzz off – go away
• Mark Twain in “Adventure of Huckleberry Fin” used Black American Vernacular to realistically show how the “negroes” [Black Americans] talked:

“I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no objections… But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I could’t stand it. I was all over with welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome.”

The use of double negatives is evident in the above passage that is a typical characteristic of Black American Vernacular.