Literary Devices: A Comprehensive Reference

Alliteration: Repetition of one or more initial sounds in words that are very close together.

Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate real sounds.

Paronomasia (Pun): Repetition of words with very similar sounds.

Anaphora: Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, verses, or sentences.

Parallelism: Repetition of syntactic structures.

Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last word or phrase of a clause or sentence at the beginning of the next.

Concatenation: A series of anadiplosis in sequence.

Epanadiplosis: Repetition of a word at the beginning and end of a clause, verse, or sentence.

Pun: Play on words that uses multiple meanings of a term, or words that sound alike but have different meanings.

Chiasmus: A rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order, in the same or a modified form.

Hyperbaton: Altering the natural or expected order of words in a sentence.

Epithet: An adjective or descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned.

Pleonasm: The use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning; redundancy.

Enumeration: A list of words, phrases, or clauses, sometimes numbered or bulleted.

Simile or Comparison: A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion).

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

Allegory: A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

Synonyms: A sequence of consecutive or near synonyms.

Synesthesia: The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.

Metonymy: The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant.

Symbol: A word or expression that refers to another reality, often deeper and more spiritual or difficult to define.

Hyperbole: Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

Understatement: The presentation of something as being smaller, worse, or less important than it actually is.

Synecdoche: A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa.

Personification: The attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects or animals.

Apostrophe: A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction.

Antithesis: A contrast or opposition between two things.

Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.

Paradox: A statement or proposition that, despite sound reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.

Climax (Grading): A series of words or phrases arranged in ascending order of importance or intensity.

Enjambment (Overlap): The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza.