Transcript Document

Top 20
Toolbox
Figurative Language Terms
Learn.
Understand.
Utilize.
Alliteration

Repetition of an initial consonant sound.


Same sound starts a series of syllables.
"You'll never put a better bit of butter on your
knife.“


"My style is public negotiations for parity, rather
than private negotiations for position.“


(advertising slogan for Country Life butter)
(Jesse Jackson)
"The soul selects her own society.“

(Emily Dickinson)
Anaphora

Repetition of the same word or phrase at
the beginning of successive clauses or
verses.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in
France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and
growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall
fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and
in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we
shall never surrender.“

Winston Churchill, speech to the House of
Commons, June 4, 1940)
More Anaphora
Antithesis

The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in
balanced phrases.

"Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody
doesn't like Sara Lee.“


"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.“


(advertising slogan)
(Goethe)
My style is public negotiations for parity, rather
than private negotiations for position.“

(Jesse Jackson)
Apostrophe


Breaking off discourse to address some
absent person or thing, some abstract
quality, an inanimate object, or a
nonexistent character.
"Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again . . ..“


(Paul Simon, "The Sounds of Silence")
"Bright star, would I were steadfast as
thou art.“

(John Keats)
Assonance

Identity or similarity in sound between
internal vowels in neighboring words.

"It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.“


Advertising slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners
"Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.“

Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night"
Chiasmus

A verbal pattern in which the second half
of an expression is balanced against the
first but with the parts reversed.

"I flee who chases me, and chase who flees
me."
(Ovid)
"Fair is foul, and foul is fair."
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth I.i)
Euphemism

The substitution of an inoffensive
term for one considered offensively
explicit.



Ground beef for ground flesh of dead
cow;
pre-owned for used or second-hand;
Athlete =__________________
Hyperbole

An extravagant statement; the use
of exaggerated terms for the
purpose of emphasis or heightened
effect.

"I had so much homework, I needed a
pickup truck to carry all my books
home!"
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.

"It is a fitting irony that under Richard
Nixon, launder became a dirty word."
(William Zinsser)
Litotes

A figure of speech consisting of an
understatement in which an affirmative is
expressed by negating its opposite.


"The grave's a fine a private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace."
(Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
"for life's not a paragraph
And death I think is no parenthesis"
(e.e. cummings, "since feeling is first")
Metaphor

An implied comparison between two
unlike things that actually have
something important in common.





The senator...was asked how she will tackle
Sen. Obama's tight grip on the youth vote.
On the Presidential Campaign Trail (Associated
Press)
Candidates see rocky ride ahead (Baltimore
Sun)
Barack's bandwagon keeps on rolling
(EuroNews.net)
Rocky Roads To The Nominations (Town Hall)
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.

The suits on Wall Street walked off with
most of our savings.
Onomatopoeia

The formation or use of words that
imitate the sounds associated with the
objects or actions they refer to.


"Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The
horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they
deaf that they did not hear?
(Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman")
"Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is."
(slogan of Alka Seltzer, U.S.)
Oxymoron

A figure of speech in which incongruous or
contradictory terms appear side by side.

"A yawn may be defined as a silent yell."
(G.K. Chesterton)

"O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!"
(John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions)

"That building is a little bit big and pretty ugly."
(James Thurber)

"'I want to move with all deliberate haste,' said Presidentelect Barack Obama at his first, brief press conference
after his election, 'but I emphasize "deliberate" as well as
"haste."'
Paradox

A statement that appears to
contradict itself.


"The swiftest traveler is he that goes
afoot."
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
"War is peace."
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."
(George Orwell, 1984)
Personification

A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or
abstraction is endowed with human qualities or
abilities.



"The road isn't built that can make it breathe hard!"
(advertising slogan for Chevrolet automobiles)
"Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There
was no one there."
(proverb quoted by Christopher Moltisanti in The
Sopranos)
"Oreo: Milk’s favorite cookie."
(slogan on a package of Oreo cookies)
Pun

A play on words, sometimes on different
senses of the same word and sometimes
on the similar sense or sound of different
words.

"When it rains, it pours.“


"Look deep into our ryes.“


advertising slogan for Morton Salt
slogan of Wigler's Bakery
"When it pours, it reigns.“

slogan for Michelin tires
Simile

A stated comparison (usually formed with
"like" or "as") between two fundamentally
dissimilar things that have certain
qualities in common.

"She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver
deals with meat.“


James Joyce, "The Boarding House"
"Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer
at a time, and sometimes you weep.“

Carl Sandburg
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.

"The sputtering economy could make the difference
if you're trying to get a deal on a new set of
wheels.“

Al Vaughters, WIVB.com, November 21, 2008

All hands on deck.

9/11

Brazil won the soccer match.
Understatement

A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker
deliberately makes a situation seem less
important or serious than it is.

"The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.“


"I have to have this operation . . .. It isn't very
serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.“


Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye, by J. D.
Salinger
"I am just going outside and may be some time.“

Captain Lawrence Oates, Antarctic explorer, before
walking out into a blizzard to face certain death, 1912