Top 20 Toolbox Figurative Language Terms

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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.“

(advertising slogan for Country Life butter)

"My style is public negotiations for parity, rather than private negotiations for position.“

(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)

Antithesis

The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases. "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody

doesn't like Sara Lee.“ (advertising slogan)

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.“ (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 friendI'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 paragraphAnd 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 President-elect 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.“

advertising slogan for Morton Salt "Look deep into our ryes.“

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.“ Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

"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

"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