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A short, informal reference to a famous person or event
Example:
You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first. 'Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size. --Shakespeare |
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The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, commonly in conjunction with climax and with parallelism
Example:
•To think on death it is a misery,/ To think on life it is a vanity;/ To think on the world verily it is,/ To think that here man hath no perfect bliss. --Peacham |
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Establishes a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure. Human beings are inveterate systematizers and categorizers, so the mind has a natural love for antithesis, which creates a definite and systematic relationship between ideas
Example:
To err is human; to forgive, divine. --Pope |
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A rhetorical term for the use of one part of speech (or word class) for another. In grammatical studies, anthimeria is known as a functional shift or conversion
Example:
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.(Hamlet, III.i) |
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Interrupts the discussion or discourse and addresses directly a person or personified thing, either present or absent. Its most common purpose in prose is to give vent to or display intense emotion, which can no longer be held back
Example:
•O value of wisdom that fadeth not away with time, virtue ever flourishing, that cleanseth its possessor from all venom! O heavenly gift of the divine bounty, descending from the Father of lights, that thou mayest exalt the rational soul to the very heavens! Thou art the celestial nourishment of the intellect . . . . --Richard de Bury |
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A universally understood symbol(s) or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated
Example:
2.an epitome—personality type exemplified, especially the "greatest" such example |
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Definition
Similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonants
Exxample:
•A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. --Matthew 5:14b (KJV) |
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Consists of omitting conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses. In a list of items, asyndeton gives the effect of unpremeditated multiplicity, of an extemporaneous rather than a labored account
Example:
On his return he received medals, honors, treasures, titles, fame. |
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A complete stop in a line of poetry
Example:
Sing, o goddess, the rage || of Achilles, the son of Peleus-Homer |
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Describes the "emotional cleansing" sometimes depicted in a play as occurring for one or more of its characters, as well as the same phenomenon as (an intended) part of the audience’s experience
Example:
Belongs to tragedy, but the procedure given by Aeschylus is ancient: the blood of a sacrificed piglet is allowed to wash over the blood-polluted man, and running water washes away the blood |
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A commonly understood, subjective cultural and/or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word or phrase's explicit or literal meaning
Example:
snake - evil or danger. |
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A term, devoid of emotion, attitude, and color
Example:
You know a phrase I never understood? King size. It's used to denote something larger, but most of the kings you see are short. You ever notice that? Usually a king is a short little fat guy." (George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty, 2001) |
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A style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words: good
diction
Example:
"We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with." Dr. Seuss |
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When the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. This is the result of the reader having a greater knowledge than the characters themselves.
Example:
In Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," when Hester is in the governor's garden to see to it that Pearl is not taken away from her, she asks the Reverend Dimmesdale to support her position. This is an example of dramatic irony as the reader knows that Dimmesdale and Hester are partners in sin, but the characters do not. |
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A pause in speech, an unfinished thought, or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence
Example:
•"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."
(Plato) |
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Definition
The repetition of the initial word (or words) of a clause or sentence at the end of that same clause or sentence
Example:
"Next time there won't be a next time."
(Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos) |
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Definition
(Also called antistrophe) forms the counterpart to anaphora, because the repetition of the same word or words comes at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences
Example:
•Where affections bear rule, there reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued. --Wilson |
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An adjective or adjective phrase appropriately qualifying a subject (noun) by naming a key or important characteristic of the subject, as in "laughing happiness," "sneering contempt," "untroubled sleep," "peaceful dawn," and "lifegiving water." Sometimes a metaphorical epithet will be good to use, as in "lazy road," "tired landscape," "smirking billboards," "anxious apple." Aptness and brilliant effectiveness are the key considerations in choosing epithets. Be fresh, seek striking images, pay attention to connotative value
Example:
•At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth of thieves and murderers . . . . --George Herbert |
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A metaphor that continues into the sentences that follow. It is often developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work, and are especially effective in poems and fiction.
Example:
"It's at moments like these in a game [of squash] that the essentials of his character are exposed: narrow, ineffectual, stupid--and morally so. The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect."
(Ian McEwan, Saturday, 2005) |
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Definition
Compares two different things by speaking of one in terms of the other.
Example:
Her house was a prison. |
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The counterpart of understatement, deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect.
Example:
There are a thousand reasons why more research is needed on solar energy. |
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A particular form of understatement, is generated by denying the opposite or contrary of the word which otherwise would be used.
Example:
Heat waves are not rare in the summer. |
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Which the thing chosen for the metaphorical image is closely associated with (but not an actual part of) the subject with which it is to be compared.
Example:
The orders came directly from the White House. |
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A paradox reduced to two words
Example:
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, / With loads of learned lumber in his head . . . .--Alexander Pope |
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Statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.
Example:
The first number not nameable in under eleven words |
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Definition
The same comparison is used more than twice.
Example:
His hands were like paws, his hair like a great mane and his body was covered with smooth sun bleached hairs that were like the coat of an african lion. |
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A form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.
Example:
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower |
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Definition
The flaw in character which leads to the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy.
Example:
Julius Ceasar |
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Means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance.
Example:
The fact that President Bush thinks that he can invade any country he thinks might pose a threat one day. |
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Definition
A commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama.
Example:
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man |
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Definition
The formation of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things, or of such images collectively
Example:
The bright orange smelt of fresh citrus. |
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Definition
Subsequent uses of flashbacks for exposition of earlier events in order to fill in the backstory.
Example:
A murder story starts after the person is murdered. The story then gradually reveals why and how the murder took place. |
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Is rhyme that occurs in a single line of verse.
Example:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, |
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A balance of two or more similar words, phrases, or clauses.
Example:
He's quite a man with the girls. They say he's closed the eyes of many a man and opened the eyes of many a woman. |
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Definition
The use of several conjunctions in close succession.
Example:
We have ships and men and money and stores...
He ran and jumped and laughed for joy. |
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Definition
An outcome that turns out to be very different from what was expected.
Example:
a woman who is apprehensive about attending a wedding due to being single, she however goes and there meets her future husband. |
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Definition
The representation of something in symbolic form or the attribution of symbolic meaning or character to something.
Example:
Rain in a sad picture. |
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Definition
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part.
Example:
50 head of cattle for 50 cows, or the army for a soldier |
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Definition
The branch of linguistics that deals with the grammatical arrangement of words and morphemes in the sentences of a language or of languages in general.
Example:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. |
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A figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant.
Example:
The young girl stares at him in disbelief. "I'm not mad!" she yells, gritting her teeth. The look on her face clearly showed the anger that she was trying so hard to mask. |
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