Figures Of

Speech
Alliteration

The repetition of
an initial
consonant sound.
Anaphora
 The Repetition of the same word or phrase
at the beginning of successive clauses or
verses.

Example – “I needed a drink, I needed a lot

of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I
needed a home in the country. What I had
was a coat, a hat and a gun.
By Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My lovely,1940.
Antithesis

 Thejuxtaposition of contrasting
ideas in balanced phrases.

Example – “Love is an ideal

thing, marriage a real thing”
By Goethe
Apostrophe

 Breaking off discourse to

address some absent person or
thing, some abstract quality, an
inanimate object, or a
nonexistent character.
Assonance

 Identityor similarity in sound

between internal vowel in
neighboring words.

 Example – “ If I bleat when I speak

it’s because I just got….fleeced.”
By Al Swearengen in Deadwood, 2004
Chiasmus

A verbal pattern in which the

second half of an expression is
balanced against the first but with
the parts reversed.

 Example- “Nice to see you, to see

you, nice!”
Euphemism
 The substitution of an
inoffensive term for one
considered offensively explicit.

Example – Paul Kersey : You’ve

got a prime figure. You really
have, you know.
That’s a euphemism for fat.
Hyperbole

An extravagant statement;

the use of exaggerated
terms for the purpose of
emphasis or heightened
effect.
Irony
 The use of words to convey the
opposite of their literary meaning. A
statement or situation where the
meaning is contradicted by the
appearance or presentation of the
idea.
 Example –
 Women: I started riding these train in
the forties. Those days a man would give
up his seat for a woman. Now we’re
liberated and we have to stand.
 Elaine – It’s ironic.
 Woman: What’s ironic?
 Elaine – This, that we’ve come all this
way, we have made all this progress,
but you know we’ve lost the little things,
the niceties.
Litotes

A figure of speech consisting of

an understatement in which an
affirmative is expressed by
negating its opposite.
Metaphor

 An implied comparison between two

unlike things that actually have something
important in common.
 Example – “ A man may break a word with
you sir, and words are but wind.”
 By William Shakespeare, from ‘The Comedy
of Errors.’
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.
Onomatopoeia

 The use of words that imitate the

sounds associated with the objects or
actions they refer to.

 Example – “Chug, chug, chug, puff, puff.

 Ding-dong, ding-dong. The little rain
rumbled over the tracks.
Oxymoron
 A figure of speech in which incongruous or
contradictory terms appear side by side.

 Examples – act naturally, random order, original

copy, conspicuous absence, found missing,
alone together , criminal justice, old news,
peace force, even odds, awful good, student
teacher, deafening silence, definite possibility,
definite maybe, terribly pleased, ill health, turn
up missing, jumbo shrimp, loose tights, small
crowd, and clearly misunderstood.
Personification

 A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or

abstraction is endowed with human qualities or
abilities.

 Example-
The wind stood up and gave a shout. He whistled on his fingers
and kicked the withered leaves about and thumped the
branches with his hand. And he said he’d kill and kill and kill,
and so he will, so he will. By James Stephen(The Wind).
Simile

 A stated comparison ( usually formed with

“like” or “as”) between two fundamentally
dissimilar things that have certain qualities
in common.

 Example – “Good coffee is like friendship:

rich and warm and strong.”
 (slogan of Pan-American coffee bureau)
Synecdoche

 A figure of speech in which a part is used

to represent the whole (for example, ABCs
for alphabet) or the whole for a part(“
England won the World Cup in 1966.”)

 Example – “The sputtering economy could

make a difference if you’re trying to get a
deal on a new set of wheels.”
Understatement

 A figure of speech in which a writer or a

speaker deliberately makes a situation
seem less important or serious than it is.

 Example – The grave’s a fine and a

private place, but none, I think, do
there embrace.”
 By Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy
Mistress”