Figures of speech
2
The Top 20 Figures of speech
1. Alliteration
Repetition of an initial consonant sound.
2. Anaphora
Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of
successive clauses or verses.
3. Antithesis
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
4. Apostrophe
Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing,
some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent
character.
5. Assonance
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in
neighboring words.
6. Chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is
balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.
7. Euphemism
The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered
offensively explicit.
8. Hyperbole
An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the
purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
9. Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning.
A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by
the appearance or presentation of the idea.
10. Litotes
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an
affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
1
11. Metaphor
An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually
have something important in common.
12. Metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for
another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical
strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things
around it.
13. Onomatopoeia
The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated
with the objects or actions they refer to.
14. Oxymoron
A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms
appear side by side.
15. Paradox
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
16. Personification
A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is
endowed with human qualities or abilities.
17. Pun
A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word
and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
18. Simile
A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between
two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in
common.
19. Synechdoche
A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole,
the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for
the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.
20. Understatement
A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately
makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
2
1.Alliteration
Definition:
• Assonance
• Consonance
• Homoioteleuton
• Reduplicative
• Rhyme
Etymology:
3
• "The daily diary of the American dream."
(slogan of The Wall Street Journal)
• "Good men are gruff and grumpy, cranky, crabbed, and cross."
(Clement Freud)
Pronunciation: ah-lit-err-RAY-shun
Also Known As: head rhyme, initial rhyme, front rhyme
Figures of Sound
AssonanceOnomatopoeiaHomoioteleuton
Common Figures
4
2.Anaphora (rhetoric)
Definition:
• Bryson's Anaphora
• Giovanni's Anaphora
• "I Have a Dream"
Etymology:
Examples:
• "It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs;
the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a
young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope
of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny
kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him,
5
too."
(Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Hope," July 27, 2004)
• "I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to live. I'm not afraid to fail.
I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love. I'm not
afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about
myself for five minutes."
(Kinky Friedman, When the Cat's Away)
Pronunciation: ah-NAF-oh-rah
Also Known As: epanaphora, iteratio, relatio, repetitio, report
• Commoratio
• Diacope
• Would You Repeat That, Please?
Common Figures
6
3.Antithesis
Definition:
• Parallelism
• Chiasmus
• Isocolon
• The Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy
• The Inaugural Address of Barack Obama
Etymology:
Examples:
• "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the
age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of
belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the
winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going
direct the other way."
(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)
• "I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark
should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by
dryrot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in
7
magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper
function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in
trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
(Jack London)
Pronunciation: an-TITH-uh-sis
Figures of Balance
AnaphoraAppositionParallelism
Figures of Speech
8
4.Apostrophe (figure of speech)
Definition:
• Personification
• Ecphonesis
• Top 20 Figures of Speech
Etymology:
Examples:
9
Little dry death, future,
Your indirections are as strange to me
As my own. I know so little that anything
You might tell me would be a revelation."
(W.S. Merwin, "Sire")
• "Dear Ella
Our Special First Lady of Song
You gave your best for so long."
(Kenny Burrell, "Dear Ella")
Pronunciation: ah-POS-tro-fee
Also Known As: turne tale, aversio, aversion
Master Tropes
MetaphorWhat Is Irony?Metonymy
Figures of Speech
ChiasmusEpexegesisSynathroesmus
10
5.Assonance
Definition:
• Parechesis
• Homoioteleuton
• Consonance
Etymology:
Examples:
• "The spider skins lie on their sides, translucent and ragged, their
legs drying in knots."
(Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm)
• "The setting sun was licking the hard bright machine like some
great invisible beast on its knees."
(John Hawkes, Death, Sleep, and the Traveler)
• "A lanky, six-foot, pale boy with an active Adam's apple, ogling
Lo and her orange-brown bare midriff, which I kissed five minutes
11
later, Jack."
(Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
Observations:
Pronunciation: ASS-a-nins
Also Known As: medial rhyme (or rime)
Sound Effects
• Alliteration
• Homoioteleuton
• Onomatopoeia
12
6.Chiasmus
Definition:
Etymology:
Examples:
• "I flee who chases me, and chase who flees me."
(Ovid)
• "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is
good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
(Samuel Johnson)
• "If black men have no rights in the eyes of the white men, of
course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks."
(Frederick Douglass, "An Appeal to Congress for Impartial
Suffrage")
13
• "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to
preserve change amid order."
(Alfred North Whitehead)
• "Don't sweat the petty things--and don't pet the sweaty things."
(anonymous)
• "You can take it out of the country, but you can't take the
country out of it."
(slogan for Salem cigarettes)
Pronunciation: ki-AZ-mus
Also Known As: antimetabole, epanodos
Matching Figures
• Tricolon
• Parison
• Isocolon
14
7.Euphemism
Definition:
Etymology:
• Dan Foreman: Guys, I feel very terrible about what I'm about to
say. But I'm afraid you're both being let go.
Lou: Let go? What does that mean?
15
Dan Foreman: It means you're being fired, Louie.
(In Good Company, 2004)
• Mr. Prince: We'll see you when you get back from image
enhancement camp.
Martin Prince: Spare me your euphemisms! It's fat camp, for
Daddy's chubby little secret!
("Kamp Krusty," The Simpsons, 1992)
• Paul Kersey: You've got a prime figure. You really have, you
know.
Joanna Kersey: That's a euphemism for fat.
(Death Wish, 1974)
Pronunciation: YOO-fuh-miz-em
Also Known As: soft language, euphemismus, conciliatio,
paradiastole, soother
DenotationConnotationDistinctio
Offending Words
DysphemismTapinosisMeiosis
16
8.Hyperbole
Definition:
See also:
Etymology:
• "Kingsley fell over. And this was no brisk trip or tumble. It was
an act of colossal administration. First came a kind of slow-leak
effect, giving me the immediate worry that Kingsley, when fully
deflated, would spread out into the street on both sides of the
island, where there were cars, trucks, sneezing buses. Next, as I
grabbed and tugged, he felt like a great ship settling on its side:
would it right itself, or go under? Then came an impression of
overall dissolution and the loss of basic physical coherence. I
groped around him, looking for places to shore him up, but every
bit of him was falling, dropping, seeking the lowest level, like a
mudslide."
(Martin Amis, describing his father)
17
• "O for the gift of Rostand's Cyrano to invoke the vastness of that
nose alone as it cleaves the giant screen from east to west, bisects
it from north to south. It zigzags across our horizon like a bolt of
fleshy lightning."
(John Simon, review of Barbra Streisand, 1976)
Pronunciation: hi-PURR-buh-lee
Also Known As: overstatement, exuperatio
Master Tropes
• Metaphor
• Metonymy
• Irony
Scrapbook of Styles
18
9.Irony
Definition:
See also:
• What Is Irony?
• Ironist
• Irony Deficiency
• Antiphrasis
• "A Modest Proposal," by Jonathan Swift
• Sarcasm
• Accismus
• Epitrope
Etymology:
19
• "Irony has always been a primary tool the under-powered use
to tear at the over-powered in our culture. But now irony has
become the bait that media corporations use to appeal to educated
consumers. . . . It's almost an ultimate irony that those who say
they don't like TV will sit and watch TV as long as the hosts of their
favorite shows act like they don't like TV, either. Somewhere in this
swirl of droll poses and pseudo-insights, irony itself becomes a kind
of mass therapy for a politically confused culture. It offers a
comfortable space where complicity doesn't feel like complicity. It
makes you feel like you are counter-cultural while never requiring
you to leave the mainstream culture it has so much fun teasing. We
are happy enough with this therapy that we feel no need to enact
social change."
(Dan French, review of The Daily Show, 2001)
Pronunciation: I-ruh-nee
Also Known As: eironeia, illusio, dry mock
Master Tropes
• Metaphor
• Metonymy
• Hyperbole
Varieties of Irony
• Accismus
• Sarcasm
• Antiphrasis
Related Articles
20
10.Litotes
Definition:
Etymology:
Examples:
21
Not even the smart twelve-year-olds--the stupid ones! The idiots--
of which there are plenty, thanks in no small measure to this
network! So why don't you just change the channel? Turn off the
TV. Do it right now. Go ahead."
(Judd Hirsch playing Wes Mendell in the pilot episode of Studio 60
on the Sunset Strip, 2006)
Pronunciation: LI-toe-teez
Figures of Emphasis
• Hyperbole
• Understatement
• Parrhesia
Common Figures
Metaphors
• Metaphor
• Vehicle
• Tenor
22
11.Metaphor
Definition:
See also:
• What Is a Metaphor?
• Time Metaphors
• 13 Types of Metaphors
Etymology:
Examples:
23
• "Men's words are bullets, that their enemies take up and make
use of against them."
(George Savile, Maxims)
• "A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but
wind."
(Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors)
Pronunciation: MET-ah-for
Also Known As: lexical metaphor
Working Metaphors
1. Absolute Metaphor
A metaphor in which one of the terms (the tenor) can't be readily
distinguished from the other (thevehicle).
24
2. Complex Metaphor
A metaphor in which the literal meaning is expressed through more
than one figurative term (a combination of primary metaphors).
3. Conceptual Metaphor
A metaphor in which one idea (or conceptual domain) is understood
in terms of another.
4. Conventional Metaphor
A familiar comparison that doesn't call attention to itself as a figure of
speech.
5. Creative Metaphor
An original comparison that does call attention to itself as a figure of
speech.
6. Dead Metaphor
A figure of speech that has lost its force and imaginative effectiveness
through frequent use.
7. Extended Metaphor
A comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a
series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem.
8. Mixed Metaphor
A succession of incongruous or ludicrous comparisons.
9. Primary Metaphor
A basic, intuitively understood metaphor--such as KNOWING IS
SEEING or TIME IS MOTION--that may be combined with other
primary metaphors to produce complex metaphors.
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10. Root Metaphor
An image, narrative, or fact that shapes an individual's perception of
the world and interpretation of reality.
26
12.Metonymy
Filed In:
Definition:
• Metonym
• Synecdoche
• Tom Wolfe's Status Details
Etymology:
27
fields."
(Connie Eble, "Metonymy." The Oxford Companion to the English
Language, 1992)
• The White House asked the television networks for air time on
Monday night.
• The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings.
Pronunciation: me-TON-uh-me
Also Known As: denominatio, misnamer, transmutation
Figures of Substitution
AntonomasiaSynecdocheMetonym
Master Tropes
MetaphorHyperboleIrony
28
13.Onomatopoeia
Filed In:
Definition:
• Onomatope
• Reduplicative
• Sound Symbolism
• Introduction to Etymology
Etymology:
29
It's sort of whack, whir, wheeze, whine
Sputter, splat, squirt, scrape
Clink, clank, clunk, clatter
Crash, bang, beep, buzz
Ring, rip, roar, retch
Twang, toot, tinkle, thud
Pop, plop, plunk, pow
Snort, snuck, sniff, smack
Screech, splash, squish, squeak
Jingle, rattle, squeal, boing
Honk, hoot, hack, belch."
(Todd Rundgren, "Onomatopoeia")
Pronunciation: ON-a-MAT-a-PEE-a
Also Known As: echo word
30
Figures of Sound
• Homoioteleuton
• Onomatopoeia
• Assonance
Writers on Writing
Figures of Speech
Related Articles
31
14.Oxymoron
Filed In:
Definition:
Etymology:
32
• "O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!"
(John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions)
"It’s not easy to be both deliberate and hasty at the same time
unless you are consciously embracing an oxymoron--from the
Greek word meaning 'pointedly foolish'--and it is a jarring
juxtaposition of contradictory words like 'cruel kindness' and
'thunderous silence.'"
(William Safire, "Frugalista." The New York Times, Nov. 21, 2008)
Pronunciation: ox-see-MOR-on
Figures of Speech
• Paradox
• Top 20 Figures of Speech
• Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis
Rhetorical Analyses
33
15.Paradox
Filed In:
Definition:
• Verbal Paradox
• Oxymoron
• "The Superstition of School," by G.K. Chesterton
• "Paradox and Dream," by John Steinbeck
Etymology:
34
• "A dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tale when it's
pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased and wag my tale when I'm
angry."
• "War is peace."
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."
(George Orwell, 1984)
• "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified
that concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real
and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and
could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did,
he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr
would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he
was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't
have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."
(Joseph Heller, Catch-22)
• "Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales
again."
(C.S. Lewis to his godchild, Lucy Barfield, to whom he dedicated
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
Pronunciation: PAR-a-dox
Scrapbook of Styles
Logic
LogosAntirrhesisArgument
35
Figures of Speech
16.Personification
Filed In:
Definition:
• What Is Personification?
• Personification in Motherless Brooklyn
• "On a Rainy Morning," by C. S. Brooks
• "Story of a Garden," by Mabel Wright
• Progymnasmata
36
And so he will and so he will.
(James Stephens, "The Wind")
• "The operation is over. On the table, the knife lies spent, on its
side, the bloody meal smear-dried upon its flanks. The knife rests."
(Richard Selzer, "The Knife")
• "Only the champion daisy trees were serene. After all, they were
part of a rain forest already two thousand years old and scheduled
for eternity, so they ignored the men and continued to rock the
diamondbacks that slept in their arms. It took the river to persuade
them that indeed the world was altered."
(Toni Morrison, Tar Baby)
Pronunciation: per-SON-if-i-KAY-shun
Also Known As: prosopopoeia
Figures of Speech
LitotesHyperboleSynecdoche
Figurative Comparisons
37
Key Figures
17.Pun
Filed In:
Definition:
• Paronomasia
• Antanaclasis
• Homophones
• Verbal Play
• Charles Lamb on Puns
• Store Name Puns
Etymology:
Uncertain
38
Examples:
• "A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a
pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect."
(Charles Lamb)
39
name of the author of The Tiger's Revenge--Claude Bawls."
(Peter Farb, Word Play, 1974)
Pronunciation: pun
Also Known As: paronomasia
Word Play
ParonomasiaBlendMalapropism
Your Writing
HomonymAntonymSynonym
Related Articles
40
18.Simile
Filed In:
Definition:
Etymology:
• "He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him
crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede)
41
• "Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and
sometimes you weep."
(Carl Sandburg)
• "The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they
become superimposed."
(F.L. Lucas)
a fish hook
an open eye"
(Margaret Atwood)
• "She has a voice like a baritone sax issuing from an oil drum,
and hams even with her silences."
(John Simon, reviewing Kathleen Turner in Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?, April 2005)
• "Life is rather like a tin of sardines: we're all of us looking for the
key."
(Alan Bennett)
• "Matt Leinart slid into the draft like a bald tire on black ice."
(Rob Oller, Columbus Dispatch, Feb. 25, 2007)
Pronunciation: SIM-i-lee
42
• Top 20 Figures of Speech
43
Tropes
• Metaphor
• Hyperbole
• Irony
Related Articles
44
19.Synecdoche
Filed In:
Definition:
Etymology:
• 9/11
• white-collar criminals
45
invites or expects the viewer to 'fill in the gaps' and advertisements
frequently employ this trope."
(Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics. Routledge, 2002)
• "It's true that there's something sad about the fact that David
Leavitt's short stories' sole description of some characters is that
their T-shirts have certain brand names on them. . . . In our post-
1950s, inseparable-from-TV association pool, brand loyalty really is
synecdochic of character."
(David Foster Wallace, "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S.
Fiction." The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993)
Pronunciation: si-NEK-di-key
Also Known As: intellectio, quick conceit
Figures of Substitution
• Antonomasia
• Metonymy
• Euphemism
Master Tropes
• Metaphor
• Hyperbole
• Irony
Common Figures
46
20.Understatement
Filed In:
Definition:
47
• "A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously
regarded as a thing of beauty."
(Mark Twain)
• "I have to have this operation. It isn't very serious. I have this
tiny little tumor on the brain."
(Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye, by J. D. Salinger)
• "Well, that's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it?"
(Dinner guest, after a visit from the Grim Reaper, in Monty Python's
The Meaning of Life)
Pronunciation: UN-der-STATE-ment
Also Known As: litotes
Common Figures
Figures of Speech
MeiosisLitotesHyperbole
48
"On the Decay of the Art of Lying""Two Ways of Seeing a River"Writers
on English Spelling
Accismus
Definition:
Etymology:
• "The purer the golden vessel, the more readily is it bent: the
higher worth of women is sooner lost than that of men. . . .
49
"Nature herself has surrounded these delicate souls with an ever-
present, in-born guard, with modesty, both in speaking and
hearing. A woman requires no figure of eloquence--herself
excepted--so often as that of accismus.*
"* So rhetoricians term the figure by which one speaks, without all
longing, of the very objects for which one feels the strongest."
(Jean Paul, Levana: Or, The Doctrine of Education, 1848)
Pronunciation: ak-IZ-mus
Varieties of Irony
• Chleuasmos
• Antiphrasis
• Verbal Irony
50
Accumulation
Definition:
Etymology:
Examples:
51
I’ve been uplinked and downloaded,
I’ve been inputted and outsourced.
I know the upside of downsizing,
I know the downside of upgrading.
Pronunciation: ah-kyoom-you-LAY-shun
Also Known As: accumulatio, congeries
52
Allegory
Definition:
• Aptronym
• "False and True Humour," by Joseph Addison
• Metaphor
• Parable
Etymology:
Example:
"And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is
enlightened or unenlightened: Behold! human beings living in an
underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and
reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood,
and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and
can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning
round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a
distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way;
and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the
screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which
they show the puppets. . . . And now look again, and see what will
naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their
error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly
to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the
light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will
be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen
the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he
saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching
nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he
has a clearer vision."
(Plato, "Allegory of the Cave" from Book Seven of The Republic)
53
Pronunciation: AL-eh-gor-ee
Also Known As: inversio, permutatio, false semblant
• Metaphor
• Fable
• Narrative
Narratives
Alliteration
Definition:
• Assonance
• Consonance
• Homoioteleuton
• Reduplicative
• Rhyme
Etymology:
54
vigorous salad consumption and sulkiness."
(Marisha Pessl, "Seize the Weight," The New York Times, Oct. 6,
2006)
• "Good men are gruff and grumpy, cranky, crabbed, and cross."
(Clement Freud)
Pronunciation: ah-lit-err-RAY-shun
Also Known As: head rhyme, initial rhyme, front rhyme
55
Allusion
Definition:
Etymology:
• "I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't count; building
arks does."
(Warren Buffett)
• "I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and
sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the Planet Earth."
(Senator Barack Obama, speech at a fund-raiser for Catholic
charities, October 16, 2008)
56
• "Senator Obama's call to 'ask not just what our government can
do for us, but what we can do for ourselves' had an even more
direct connection to the inaugural address of the first G.I.
Generation president of the United States."
(Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, Millennial Makeover. Rutgers
Univ. Press, 2008)
Pronunciation: ah-LOO-zhen
57
Ambiguity
Definition:
• Lexical Ambiguity
• Syntactic Ambiguity
• Amphiboly
• Crash Blossom
• Double Entendre
• Equivocation
• Garden-Path Sentence
Etymology:
58
might be taken without sheer misreading. If a pun is quite obvious
it would not be called ambiguous, because there is no room for
puzzling. But if an irony is calculated to deceive a section of its
readers, I think it would ordinarily be called ambiguous."
(William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1947)
• "Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen potatoes cooked like that
before."
(Jonah Baldwin in the film Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)
Pronunciation: am-big-YOU-it-tee
Also Known As: amphibologia, amphibolia, semantic ambiguity,
equivocation
59
Amplification
Definition:
Etymology:
Examples:
Pronunciation: am-pli-fi-KAY-shun
60
Amplification
• Copia
• Epimone
• Synathroesmus
Amplifying Figures
• Metaphor
• Hyperbole
• Simile
61
Anadiplosis
Definition:
Repetition of the last word of one line or clause to begin the next.
Anadiplosis often leads to climax (see also gradatio). Note that a
chiasmus includes anadiplosis, but not every anadiplosis reverses itself
in the manner of a chiasmus. See also: Would You Repeat That,
Please?
Etymology:
Examples:
62
• "The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it."
(Dylan Thomas on Wales)
• "Only the brave deserve the fair and the fair deserve Jaeger."
(advertising slogan for Jaeger Sportswear)
• "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger
leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you."
(Frank Oz as Yoda in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menance)
Mounting Figures
• Gradatio
• Climax
• Auxesis
Figures of Repetition
• Diacope
• Epizeuxis
• Ploce
63
Analogy
Definition:
• What Is an Analogy?
• Analogies in David Simon's "Homicide"
• "The Battle of the Ants," by Henry David Thoreau
• Benchley's "Advice to Writers"
Etymology:
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• "If I had not agreed to review this book, I would have stopped
after five pages. After 600, I felt as if I were inside a bass drum
banged on by a clown."
(Richard Brookhiser, "Land Grab." The New York Times, Aug. 12,
2007)
Pronunciation: ah-NALL-ah-gee
Figurative Comparisons
• Simile
• Metaphor
• Catachresis
Arts of Persuasion
• Ethos
• Pathos
• Logos
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Anaphora (rhetoric)
Definition:
• Bryson's Anaphora
• Giovanni's Anaphora
• "I Have a Dream"
Etymology:
Examples:
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hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong
Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds;
the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that
America has a place for him, too."
(Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Hope," July 27, 2004)
• "I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to live. I'm not afraid to fail.
I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love. I'm not
afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about
myself for five minutes."
(Kinky Friedman, When the Cat's Away)
Pronunciation: ah-NAF-oh-rah
Also Known As: epanaphora, iteratio, relatio, repetitio, report
• Commoratio
• Diacope
• Would You Repeat That, Please?
Common Figures
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Anticlimax
Definition:
Etymology:
• "'For God, for Country and for Yale,' the outstanding single anti-
climax in the English language."
(James Thurber)
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• "He has seen the ravages of war, he has known natural
catastrophes, he has been to singles bars."
(Woody Allen, "Speech to the Graduates")
Pronunciation: ant-tee-CLI-max
Also Known As: catacosmesis
Figures of Climax
• Climax
• Gradatio
• Anadiplosis
Comic Effects
• Antanaclasis
• Parody
• Malapropism
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Epithet
Filed In:
Definition:
• Antonomasia
• Hypallage
Etymology:
• "In art, all who have done something other than their
predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is
they alone who are masters."
(Paul Gauguin)
• "Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot. He was not
afraid to die, oh brave Sir Robin. He was not at all afraid to be killed
in nasty ways, brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin."
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
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• "The fixed epithet, a special variety found in epic poetry, is the
repeated use of an adjective or phrase for the same subject; thus in
Homer's Odyssey, the wife Penelope is always 'prudent,' the son
Telemachus is always 'sound minded,' and Odysseus himself is
'many minded.'"
(Stephen Adams, Poetic Designs. Broadview, 1997)
Pronunciation: EP-i-tet
Also Known As: qualifier
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RHETORICAL QUESTION
Definition:
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question."
(Irene Koshik, Beyond Rhetorical Questions. John Benjamins, 2005)
Rhetorical Questions
ErotesisEpiplexisHypophora
Rhetorical Terms
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