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Figure of Speech
Top 20
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Alliteration | Repetition of an initial consonant sound |
Anaphora | Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses |
Antithesis | The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases |
Apostrophe | Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character |
Assonance | Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words |
Chiamus | A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed |
Euphemism | The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit |
Hyperbole | n 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 literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea |
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 |
Metonymy | A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; substituting a word naming an object for another word closely associated with it. EX: Pay tribute to the crown |
Onomatopoeia | The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to |
Oxymoron | A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side |
Paradox | A statement that appears to contradict itself |
Personification | A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities |
Pun | A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words |
Simile | A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common. |
Synecdoche | 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 |
Understatement | A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is. |