Excercise no. 3

A figure of speech is a change from the ordinary manner of expression, using words in other than their literal sense to enhance the way a thought is expressed.

The following are the more common figures of Speech you can use to achieve some interesting "effects" in your writing:

Alliteration: the same sound is repeated noticeably at the beginning of words placed close together

Examples--

"World Wide Web"

"Find four furry foxes"

Recommendation: Use alliteration sparingly. Too much can wear on the reader.

Allusion: casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event.

e.g., " . . . a turn of phrase even Shakespeare would appreciate."

Apostrophe: direct address of an absent or dead person or personified thing.

• Invocation: an apostrophe to a god or muse.
  

Examples--

"God help me!"

"Ambition, you're a cruel master!"

Irony: using words to mean the opposite of what is said.

• Sarcasm: cutting, sneering or taunting irony_.

Examples--

"He's handsome if you like rodents."

• Hyperbole: exaggeration not meant to be taken literally.

Examples--

"I waited forever for him."

"I destroyed that test!"

"The world ended the day my father died."

• Understatement: the representation of something as significantly less than it actually is.

e.g. "That was some sprinkle." (in reference to the four inches of rain which fell an hour before)

Metaphor: an implied comparison between things, events, or actions which are fundamentally unlike.

• Metonymy: substituting a word--which is suggested by it or which is closely associated with it--for another word
  

Examples--

"He hit the bottle soon after his wife died."

"She counted heads."

"The White House denied the allegations."

• Synecdoche: using a part for the whole or the whole for a part
  

e.g. "The pen is mightier than the sword"

• Personification: representing a thing, quality, or idea as a person

• Examples--
  
• "The book just begged to be read."
• "The ocean screamed its fury"
• "Fear lived with us in Vietnam."
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Recommendations:

• The comparison should be more evocative and appealing than the literal, plain statement of the thought.
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• Use sparingly. Too much of this and you call attention to yourself as the author instead of leaving your reader immersed in your story

Onomatopoeia: using words to imitate the sound they represent

Examples--

"I heard the hiss of steam down in the access tunnel."

"The clock in the living room cuckooed the hour."

"The clang of the cymbals echoed across the square."

Parallelism (aka "Balance"): Expressing two ideas of equal importance through similar phrasing.

• Antithesis: parallelism in grammatical pattern but strong contrast in meaning.
  

Examples--

"Give me liberty or give me death!"

"That isn't the truth, it's a lie."

"You seem so wise, yet how foolish you are."

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• Recommendation: Don't use too much of this; it can easily wear on the reader.

• Paradox: a statement that seems self-contradictory. The effect of this is to jolt the reader into paying attention.
  

Examples--

"He who loses his life for My sake will save it."

"One day is sometimes better than a whole year."

• Oxymoron: a paradoxical statement in which two contradictory terms or words are brought together.

Examples--

"The quiet was deafening."

"He was clearly misunderstood."

"They were alone together."

• Anaphora: repetition of the same word or words at the beginning or successive clauses, verses, or sentences,

e.g., "He came as conqueror. He came as ally. He came as a stranger. He came as brother."

• Climax: The arrangement of a series of ideas or events in ascending order of importance, interest, or effectiveness. Stresses the relative importance of ideas or events.

• Anticlimax: the use of climax up to the end of a series of thoughts and then the insertion of some unimportant idea in the last, most important position. Useful in humorous writing.

Simile: an explicit comparison between things, events, or actions which are fundamentally unlike. .

• Typically involves the words "like" or "as"
  

Examples:

"His arguments withered like grapevines in the fall."

"He was cold as an arctic wind."

"Crooked as a dog's hind leg."

"Casual dress, like casual speech, tends to be loose, relaxed and colorful"

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• Recommendations:

The comparison should be more evocative and appealing than the literal, plain statement of the though

Use sparingly. Too much of this and you call attention to yourself as the author instead of leaving your reader immersed in your story

If a simile seems too awkward, convert it into a metaphor to see if it works better; but note that not every simile can be turned into a metaphor.

Figures of Speech

Figure of Speech	Definition	Example
alliteration	The repetition of the same consonant sounds or of different vowel sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables	"on scrolls of silver snowy sentences" (Hart Crane)
anacoluthon	An abrupt change within a sentence to a second construction inconsistent with the first, sometimes used for rhetorical effect	"I warned him that if he continues to drink, what will become of him?"
anadiplosis	Rhetorical repetition at the beginning of a phrase of the word or words with which the previous phrase ended	"He is a man of loyalty--loyalty always firm."
anaphora	The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs	"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" (Winston S. Churchill)
anastrophe	Inversion of the normal syntactic order of words	"Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear" (Alexander Pope)
anthropomorphism	Attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.
antiphrasis	The use of a word or phrase in a sense contrary to its normal meaning for ironic or humorous effect	"a mere babe of 40 years"
antithesis	A figure of speech in which sharply contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in a balanced or parallel phrase or grammatical structure	"Hee for God only, shee for God in him" (John Milton)
antonomasia	The substitution of a personal name for a common noun to designate a member of a group or class	calling a traitor a "Benedict Arnold"
aposiopesis	A sudden breaking off of a thought in the middle of a sentence, as though the speaker were unwilling or unable to continue.	This sentence is an example of—
assonance	Resemblance of sound, especially of the vowel sounds in words	"that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea" (William Butler Yeats)
catachresis	Strained use of a word or phrase, as for rhetorical effect.	The Clifton Suspension Bridge, from which many a young person has jumped to their conclusion.
chiasmus	A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures	"Each throat/Was parched, and glazed each eye" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
circumlocution	The use of unnecessarily wordy and indirect language.
double-entendre	A word or phrase having a double meaning, especially when the second meaning is risqué.
dysphemism	the substitution of a harsh, disparaging, or unpleasant expression for a more neutral one.	You idiot!, instead of That was unwise.
enallage	the use of one grammatical form in place of another, as the plural for the singular in the editorial use of "we"	We are not amused.(Queen Victoria)
epistrophe	the repetition of a word or words at the end of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences	"I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong..." (Shakespeare)
epithet	A term used to characterize a person or thing. A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person	rosy-fingered in rosy-fingered dawn the Great in Catherine the Great The Great Emancipator for Abraham Lincoln
equivoke	An intentionally ambiguous word, phrase, or expression
euphemism	The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive	"neutralize" for "kill"
euphuism	Affected elegance of language	From these generic visits sprang an abiogenetic romance.
hyperbaton	A figure of speech, such as anastrophe or hysteron proteron, using deviation from normal or logical word order to produce an effect
hyperbole	A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect	"I could sleep for a year" or "This book weighs a ton."
hysteron proteron	A figure of speech in which the natural or rational order of its terms is reversed	"bred and born" instead of "born and bred".
inversion	A change in normal word order, such as the placement of a verb before its subject.
irony	The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
litotes	A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite	"This is no small problem"
logodaedely	Cunning word-play
malapropism	Ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound.
metaphor	A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison	"a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare)
metonymy	A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated	the use of Washington for the United States government or of the sword for military power
oxymoron	A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined	"a deafening silence" or "the little giant"
onomatopoeia	The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.	buzz or murmur
palillogy	the technique of repeating a word or phrase for emphasis.
paralipsis	the suggestion, by deliberately concise treatment of a topic, that much of significance is being omitted	"... not to mention other faults."
paronomasia	Word play; punning
personification	The representation of an object or concept as if it were a person.	Wisdom calls aloud in the street.
portmanteau word	A word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words	chortle, from chuckle and snort
preciosity	Extreme meticulousness or overrefinement, as in language, taste, or style.
rhetoric	Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous.
simile	A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as	"How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life" (Shakespeare)
spoonerism	A transposition of sounds of two or more words, especially a ludicrous one	Let me sew you to your sheet for Let me show you to your seat.
syllepsis	A construction in which a word governs two or more other words but agrees in number, gender, or case with only one, or has a different meaning when applied to each of the words	"He lost his coat and his temper"
synecdoche	A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole the whole for a part the specific for the general the general for the specific material for the thing from which it is made	hand for sailor the law for police officer cutthroat for assassin thief for pickpocket steel for sword
tmesis	The separation of the parts of a compound word, now generally done for humorous effect.	abso-bloody-lutely
trope	The figurative use of a word or an expression, as metaphor or hyperbole.
understatement	Restraint or lack of emphasis in expression, as for rhetorical effect.
zeugma	A construction in which a single word, especially a verb or an adjective, is applied to two or more nouns when its sense is appropriate to only one of them or to both in different ways	"He took my advice and my wallet"