AP English: Literary Terms & Devices

What is a direct comparison between two unlike things without using 'like' or 'as'?

Metaphor

What is a comparison between two unlike things using the words 'like' or 'as'?

Simile

What device attributes human characteristics or feelings to non-human objects or abstract ideas?

Personification

What is an intentional and extreme exaggeration used for emphasis or effect?

Hyperbole

What is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a sequence of neighboring words?

Alliteration

What term refers to words that imitate the natural sounds of the thing they describe?

Onomatopoeia

Which rhetorical appeal relies on the credibility, authority, or character of the speaker?

Ethos

Which rhetorical appeal targets the audience's emotions to persuade them?

Pathos

Which rhetorical appeal uses logic, facts, statistics, and rational arguments?

Logos

What figure of speech uses a part of something to represent the whole, or vice versa?

Synecdoche