AP Language Terms

Now and then the temptation was too strong and she fell into alliteration, writing of "ponderous puddings and curdled custards." Pennell, Elizabeth Robins

The Dalí painting is filled with classical allusions, possibly reflecting the stories being written about her Capri villa.

Continuing with our football analogy, your industry is full of potential fans, thought leaders, industry media, competitors, suppliers, and partners. Forbes (Feb 3, 2013)

A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. (Pearl Bailey), The repetition of "A man" provides the preceding sentence's anaphora.

Paisley, a West Virginia native, begins the song with an anecdote about a black man taking offense at his Confederate flag T-shirt. Seattle Times (Apr 12, 2013)

There are annotations and scribblings – some in green felt tip – throughout.

Mythological or literary antecedents, including “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” are suggested, but Ms. Courtney offers up her own brand of dream imagery.

George Sand and Balzac are often set in antithesis to each other as respectively idealistic and realistic writers. Wilkinson, William Cleaver

Dogmatic aphorisms don't, however, add up to an argument; nor can one extrapolate universal laws from limited examples.

Appositive words and phrases are separated from the remainder of the sentence by commas. Webster, W. F. (William Franklin)

Look it up: the examples he cited are both amusingly archaic, but also appropriately gruesome.

He notes that Martin Luther employed posters to get his arguments across.

They complain, further, that "seemingly unfounded assertions" are being presented as "incontrovertible facts" in pursuit of political objectives.

I'd be happier about challenging my cherished assumptions about the first three seasons if the challenge came with sharper dialogue and quicker punch lines. Slate (May 29, 2013)

Therefore the figure asyndeton, whereby conjunctions are omitted, is highly commended by writers of rhetoric. Plutarch

They grew up in the United States, their attitudes and beliefs were formed there.

Green Movement opposition protesters used social media extensively to engage a wider audience.

Videos and commercial websites are also paid content, and therefore biased and unreliable.

Citing satellite imagery, Western diplomats earlier this year said that Iran appeared to be rebuilding the site, after previously razing smaller buildings and removing soil.

French historians claim its forces were responsible for sinking the Mary Rose in battle.

As these messages are being shared by millions of people on Twitter, the software also takes into account colloquialisms. New York Times (Aug 1, 2012)

European Union officials, having won concessions from the bloc members Luxembourg and Austria over banking rules, are expected to turn their focus to Switzerland.

There are also negative connotations associated with thinness.

Mr Brewer, however, told BBC News he valued all human life and his views had been taken out of context.

He had reportedly planned to deliver the dossier directly to Pope Benedict XVI, presumably as a counterargument to his May 24 firing.

The Hague-based court has no jurisdiction over crimes if national authorities are carrying out a credible investigation and trial.

Words, in exposition, must be chosen chiefly with a view to definite denotation. Hamilton, Clayton Meeker

His fastidious diction is unmistakable: he picks up words as if with sugar tongs – as if each syllable needed personal attention.

In doing so, it packs an emotional punch, but under closer scrutiny, its assertions are not fully supported by evidence and documentation.

Alongside disciplined exaltation, there is an elegiac edge to this writing, like the black border on Victorian letters of condolence.

As we are hastily reading books and papers we continually come across maxims, epigrams, and short, pithy sayings that attract us. McCarty, Louis Philippe

In many ways, no other event better encapsulates the ethos of the Gilded Age. Forbes (Apr 3, 2013)

The aforementioned theory of salt inducing hypertension quickly became science fact or urban legend, depending on your take of the data. Salon (May 27, 2013)

He had me in a literal and figurative choke hold.

Was it more than a figure of speech, an exaggerative personification under great emotion of what most people would call chance? MacKenzie, Compton

A grammatical fragment--missing parts to make it a whole sentence.

The retired Anglican archbishop of Leshoto has been honored with those hortatory degrees by Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge and nearly 130 other universities.

Hyperbole abounded after Thursday's upset, reminding people that Japan's men can play a bit too after the country's women sensationally won last year's World Cup.

Stories about people are graphic, full of individual details, and typically involve strong visual imagery. Scientific American (May 14, 2013)

Go to the cafeteria now.

Puns, palindromes, mirror images, anagrams and inversions: these are all pivotal to Wallinger's art, succinct devices for multiplying the nuances of meaning.

The irony, of course, is that while they're serving up a few meals, their core business is virtually starving people at the same time.

His paintings of rural Britain’s standing stones, lonely copses and grassed-over forts are full of eerie surrealist expanses, jarring juxtapositions and semi-abstract forms.

The opening "lamp" metaphor is resumed with poignant visual clarity: "not knowing … / what snuffs out the wicks in his eyes."

Her sentences were dangling modifiers; but she did not care about grammar since she had a headache. Sills, Steven (Steven David Justin)

Holding the whole shebang together is Ron Howard's dry narration.

Collective wisdom is an oxymoron for such leaders.

"Her daydreams are all real," he says, relishing the paradox.

This rhythm of thought is called parallelism; and parallelism is the one thing that makes Hebrew poetry differ from prose. Hall, Newton Marshall

Any humor or parody risks sounding like strained laughter, or deflection, making it riskier than normal and best avoided — even if it’s genuinely funny. Forbes (Apr 16, 2013)

"They are written with wit, insight and, above all, pathos, offering profound commentaries on the human condition."

This was a rock star who, perhaps more than any other, had hidden behind bizarre, intimidating invented personas.

The figure was the personification of lost ambition, shattered ideals, and despair. Brawley, Benjamin Griffith

Their decades-long opposition to nuclear energy started with some reasonable premises, but then mainly descended into irrational, uninformed and exaggerated polemic. Scientific American (Feb 6, 2013)

The pronoun I and exclamation O must be always written in capital letters. Hartley, Cecil B.

She is sent on a secret Cold War propaganda mission to seduce a promising young writer into unknowingly serving his government.

What are the chances that these ten studies will refute global warming? Scientific American (May 20, 2013)

The heated rhetoric eased following the end of the drills, but fresh naval exercises early last week prompted renewed warnings of counterattack from Pyongyang. Wall Street Journal (May 19, 2013)

This begs a rhetorical question: Are politicians getting out more, meeting more "real people", and becoming more "open", or is something else happening?

The couple founded theater companies that thrived on political satire, winning acclaim from progressive audiences and critics, but also upsetting the status quo. Seattle Times (May 29, 2013)

Avoid a series of similar compound sentences, especially those of two parts of equal length, joined by and or but. Greever, Garland

“Simile,” Ms. Smith writes, “though your heart is breaking.”

Journalists covering big news stories are getting better at scouring social networks for sources.

One difficult area for universities is handling campus meetings involving controversial speakers.

It's called the straw man fallacy: refuting arguments nobody's made.

His blog has featured several posts on the subject, highlighting situations in which the conventional wisdom is... well, wise.

When the analysis is carried out fully and put into form, it becomes the Aristotelic syllogism. Newman, John Henry

In its compressed, impressionistic syntax, the writing seems almost modern but for the rhetorical devices that enrich the argument and heighten emotion.

Assistants must also synthesize large amounts of data and reading material for their bosses, Ms. Duncan said.

The underlying thesis – essentially that economic bad times help to explain social conservatism – ultimately convinces.

A French official highlighted the confrontational tone, saying Vienna would not be allowed to "dictate Europe's foreign policy".

In this paragraph every sentence is a repetition of some part of the opening or topic sentence, and serves to explain it. Webster, W. F. (William Franklin)

It's a familiar film trope in the historical epic - the wounded and screaming soldier held down by an orderly.

Awestruck is an understatement for his reaction to New York.

"Zeugma is when two or more substantives have a verb in common, which is applicable only to one of them."—B. Brown, Goold

In the line “Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips” are both metonymy and personification. Sylvester, Charles Herbert

Dinky-Dunk has taken Mrs. Dixon home and come back with a brand-new "hand," which, of course, is prairie-land synecdoche for a new hired man. Dunn, Harvey

"And so ultimately I think what she had to do then is to make it an ad hominem or personal attack." Seattle Times (Oct 22, 2010)

Yes, all theology is anthropomorphism—the making of gods in man's image. Foote, G. W. (George William)

Guggenheim's recommendations in "Waiting for 'Superman'" approach tautology, as when he urges us to "celebrate great teachers," "ensure world-class standards" and "raise literacy rates."

With elaborate circumlocution they expressed regrets, and 'tendered kindest remembrance and best wishes.' Wilson, Augusta J. Evans

Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. Engels, Friedrich

As Harvard law professor and Bush Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith has pointed out, Johnson's speech contains many hedges and equivocations. Slate (Dec 11, 2012)

He belonged to the fighting class, and was further distinguished as a hero of debate, who professed the eristic art. Plato

Several promises, in fact; December looks like being a satisfying month of teasing, suggestion and innuendo.

It is also a specimen of the Greek figure "litotes." Reade, Charles

Perhaps the solution is to be found in "neologisms", where words are taken from somewhere totally different and given an entirely new meaning.

Then he delivered this equally oddball non sequitur: “By the way, Tiger Woods is a really good man.” New York Times (Feb 27, 2010)

This correspondence of sound and sense is called onomatopoeia. Baum, Paull Franklin