Mastering Figures of Speech: Definitions and Examples
Essential Rhetorical Figures and Literary Devices
Rhetorical figures are techniques used in language to enhance meaning, evoke emotion, or create emphasis. Below are definitions and examples of key figures of speech:
Pun
A Pun is a play on words, using words that sound alike but have different meanings, or using multiple meanings of a single word. It is used to group words, either attached or detached syllables of a word, for other meanings.
Example: Gold seems money is not.Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the imitation of real sounds through the procedures of phonetic language.
Example: “Tan! Tan! Tan! Sing hammer, lifting the club are.”Comparison (Simile)
Comparison is relating a real element (A) and a figurative element (B) based on some resemblance, using a comparative link (such as as well as or like).
Example: With five teeth like five jasmine blossoms.Metonymy
Metonymy involves replacing a real element (A) with a figurative element (B) because of the proximity or association between them (e.g., physical adjacency, coincidence, origin, etc.).
Example: Enemies' blood bath his crimson tie, but there were four knives and had to succumb.Personification
Personification is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract concepts.
Example: Trees of the village slept under the sky.Hyperbole
Hyperbole is the expressive exaggeration of an idea, weighted disproportionately.
Example: You play to be: you can fit in one hand, small emerald, the ocean.Irony
Irony implies the opposite of what is being said.
Example: The lawyer sat down and said grace, Cabra, ate a meal eternal, without beginning or end.Antithesis
Antithesis is the contrast between two ideas, words, or phrases, usually in the opposite direction.
Example: In one day they were born and expired, that past ages, hours were.Exclamation
Exclamation is an expression of intense emotion, feeling, or desire, which is indicated by exclamation marks.
Example: “Goodbye, my pa, always all sweetness! Farewell, my joy, full of goodness!”Rhetorical Question
A Rhetorical Question is a question that does not expect an answer, serving instead to highlight the idea being questioned.
Example: Where are you? Where? Tell me, my love.Anaphora
Anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of several sentences or verses.
Example: So much foliage in the willows, both bird in the branches, both sing in the oriole.Parallelism
Parallelism is the repetition of phrases or very similar grammatical structures throughout a composition or part thereof.
Example: Friend, I most wanted, come the dawn of day. Friend, I loved the most, come to the light of dawn.