Figure of speech

A figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning. It can also be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, as in idiom, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, or personification. Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation.

A figure of speech is sometimes called a rhetorical figure or a locution. Not all theories of meaning have a concept of ” literal language” (see literal and figurative language). Under theories that do not, figure of speech is not an entirely coherent concept. Rhetoric originated as the study of the ways in which a source text can be transformed to suit thegoalsof the person reusing the material. For this goal, classical rhetoric detected four fundamental operations[1] that can be used to transform a sentence or a larger portion of a text: expansion, abridgement, switching, transferring.

Alliteration In language, alliteration is the repetition of a particular sound in the prominent lifts (or stressed syllables) of a series of words or phrases. Alliteration has developed largely throughpoetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to the poem’s meter, are stressed[citation needed], as in James Thomson’s verse ” Come…dragging the lazy languid Line along”. Another example is Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. Examples Alice’s aunt ate apples and acorns around August.

Becky’s beagle barked and bayed, becoming bothersome for Billy. Carries cat clawed her couch, creating chaos. Dan’s dog dove deep in the dam, drinking dirty water as he dove. Eric’s eagle eats eggs, enjoying each episode of eating. Fred’s friends fried Fritos for Friday’sfood. Garry’s giraffe gobbled gooseberry’s greedily, getting good at grabbing goodies. Hannah’s home has heat hopefully. Isaacs ice cream is interesting and Isaac is imbibing it. Jesse’s jaguar is jumping and jiggling jauntily. Kim’s kid’s kept kiting. Larry’s lizard likes leaping leopards. Mike’s microphone made muchmusic.

Nick’s nephew needed new notebooks now not never. Orson’s owl out-performed ostriches. Peter’s piglet pranced priggishly. Quincy’s quilters quit quilting quickly. Ralph’s reindeer rose rapidly and ran round the room. Sara’s seven sisters slept soundly in sand. Tim’s took tons of tools to make toys for tots. Hyperbole Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally. [2] Hyperboles are exaggerations to create emphasis or effect.

As a literary device, hyperbole is often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. An example of hyperbole is: ” The bag weighed a ton. “[3] Hyperbole makes the point that the bag was very heavy, though it probably doesn’t actually weigh a ton. examples I am so hungry I could eat a horse. I have a million things to do. I had to walk 15 miles to school in thesnow, uphill. I had a ton of homework. If I can’t buy that new game, I will die. He is as skinny as a toothpick. This car goes faster than the speed of light. That new car costs a bazillion dollars.

We are so poor; we don’t have two cents to rub together. That joke is so old, the last time I heard it I was riding on a dinosaur. They ran like greased lightning. He’s got tons ofmoney. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Her brain is the size of a pea. He is older than the hills. I’ve told you a million times” “ It was so cold, I saw polar bears wearing jackets” “ She is so dumb, she thinks Taco Bell is aMexicanphone company” The skin on her face was as thin and drawn as tight as the skin of onion and her eyes were gray and sharp like the points of two picks.

It was not a mere man he was holding, but a giant; or a block of granite. The pull was unendurable. The pain unendurable. Climax (figure of speech) a climax is a figure of speech in which words, phrases, or clauses are arranged in order of increasing importance. It is sometimes used with anadiplosis, which uses the repetition of a word or phrase in successive clauses. examples 1. ” There are three things that will endure: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. ” 2. – ” I think we’ve reached a point of great decision, not just for our nation, not only for all humanity, but for life upon the earth. 3. – ” And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. ” Let a man acknowledge his obligations to himself, hisfamily, his country, and his God. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. When you step out into the jungle, there are three things that you need to be aware of, the time of day, your whereabouts and wild animals. He is uncomplicated, upright, strict, austere and inspirational. What a piece of work this is! How holy in reason, how inestimable in faculties!

In action, how much like an angel! It is absolutely not right to arrest or detain an innocent man. It is a bigger crime to whip him for a crime he had nothing to do with. All of this is tolerable, but to sentence him to his death when he has wronged not a soul is something that cannot be excused. Such is the state of justice, an innocent man paying ever so dearly for the crime of another. As the bowler walked up to the batsman, he stared him in the eye and challenged him to hit him out of the park. The batsman accepted the challenge.

With excitement in his stride, the bowler then rushed in to hurl the ball at the batsman. The hawkeyed batter was more than prepared. With a quick and sudden twist of his bat, the ball was sent soaring to the stands. On her way to work, she met with an accident. This was how it all unfolded. As she began to cross a very street close to where she worked, she was knocked down by a speeding motorist, post the fall, a bus went over her limbs, just missing her abdomen. She managed to survive the mishap, retaining just about an inch of her life. Antithesis

Antithesis (Greek for ” setting opposite”, from ?? t? ” against” + ?? s?? ” position”) is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition. In setting the opposite, an individual brings out a contrast in the meaning (e. g. , the definition, interpretation, or semantics) by an obvious contrast in the expression. Examples Unlike short-sighted, egocentric humans, God ” sees with equal eye” the fall of a hero and a sparrow, the destruction of an atom or a solar system – Alexander Pope. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. Many are called, but few are chosen.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. – Samuel Johnson Hee for God only, shee for God in him. – by John Milton. Man proposes, God disposes. Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing. – Goethe We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. – MartinLuther King, Jr. Money is the root of all evils: povertyis the fruit of all goodness. The strong master gives his judgment and goes home; the weak servant collects his key and goes to jail. Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell. by John DrydenTo err is human, to forgive, divine. ” by Alexander Pope Many are called, but few are chosen. One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind. Speech is silver, but Silence is Gold.

You’re easy on the eyes, Hard on the heart. Brutus: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. -Julius Caesarby William Shakespeare. Patience is bitter, but it has a sweet fruit. folks who have no vices have very few virtues. – Abraham Lincoln So, justice is far from us and righteousness does not reach us We look for light, but all is darkness or brightness, but we walk in deep shadows. – New testament in Romans (5: 12) Apostrophe (figure of speech) Apostrophe (Greek ? p? st?? f? , apostrophé, ” turning away”; the final e being sounded)[1] is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. In dramatic works and poetry written in or translated into English, such a figure of speech is often introduced by the exclamation ” O”. examples ” Where, my death, is thy sting? where, O death, thy victory? 1 Corinthians 15: 55, Saint Paul of Tarsus ” O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, /

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! / Thou art the ruins of the noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times. ” Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1 ” Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. ” Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1 ” To what green altar, O mysterious priest, / Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, / And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? John Keats, ” Ode on a Grecian Urn” ” O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! ” Sir Walter Raleigh, A Historie of the World ” Roll on, thou dark and deep blue Ocean — roll! ” Lord Byron, ” Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” ” Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so”, John Donne, ” Holy Sonnet X” ” And you, Eumaeus… ” t

heOdyssey” O My friends, there is no friend. ” Montaigne, originally attributed to Aristotle[2] ” Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity! “, from Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville ” O black night, nurse of the golden eyes! ” Electra in Euripides’ Electra (c. 10 BCE, line 54), in the translation by David Kovacs (1998). ” Then come, sweet death, and rid me of this grief. ” [(Queen Isabel in Edward II by Christopher Malowe)] ” O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die. ” Romeo and Juliet(V, iii, 169-170). ” Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone Without a dream in my heart Without a love of my own. ” – from ” Blue Moon” by Lorenz Hart ” Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness. “- fromFrankensteinby Mary Shelly.

Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity! ” – from ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ by Herman Melville ” O western wind, when wilt thou blow That the small rain down can rain? ” ” Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art” – by John Keats Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it! Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. – from ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ by James Joyce. Assonance Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance[1] serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase ” Do you like blue? “, the /u? / (” o”/” ou”/” ue” sound) is repeated within the sentence and is assonant. Assonance is found more often in verse than in prose. It is used in (mainly modern) English-language poetry, and is particularly important in Old French, Spanish and the Celtic languages. examples

Hear the mellow wedding bells” by Edgar Allen Poe ” Try to light the fire” ” I lie down by the side fo my bride”/” Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese”/” Hear the lark and harden to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground” by Pink Floyd ” It’s hot and it’s monotonous. ” by Sondheim ” The crumbling thunder of seas” by Robert Louis Stevenson ” If I bleat when I speak it’s because I just got . . . fleeced. ” – ” Deadwood” by Al Swearengen ” It beats . . . as it sweeps . . . as it cleans! ” – slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners ” Those images that yet/Fresh images beget,/That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. – “ Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats ” Soft language issued from their spitless lips as they swished in low circles round and round the field, winding hither and thither through the weeds” –

” Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce ” The spider skins lie on their sides, translucent and ragged, their legs drying in knots. ” – ” Holy the Firm” by Annie Dillard ” The setting sun was licking the hard bright machine like some great invisible beast on its knees. ” – ” Death, Sleep, and the Traveler” by John Hawkes ” I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless. – ” With Love” by Thin Lizzy ” In the over-mastering loneliness of that moment, his whole life seemed to him nothing but vanity. ” – ” Night Rider” by Robert Penn Warren ” A lanky, six-foot, pale boy with an active Adam’s apple, ogling Lo and her orange-brown bare midriff, which I kissed five minutes later, Jack. ” – ” Lotita” by Vladimir Nabokov ” Strips of tinfoil winking like people” – ” The Bee Meeting” by Sylvia Plath ” I feel the need, the need for speed. ” (e) – Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards, ” Top Gun” ” It beats . . . as it sweeps . . . as it cleans! ” (e) – ” Hoover vacuum cleaners”, 1950sadvertisement

Every time I write a rhyme, these people think it’s a crime” (i) – Eminem, ” Criminal” Hear the lark and harken to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground. Chiasmus chiasmus (from the Greek: ????? , chiázo, ” to shape like the letter ? “) is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular both in Greek and in Latin literature, where it was used to articulate balance or order within a text.

As a popular example, many long and complex chiasmi have been found in Shakespeare and the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. [1][2] It is also found throughout the Book of Mormon. [3] examples The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults. – Peter de Vries Do I love you because you’re beautiful? Or are you beautiful because I love you? – Oscar Hammerstein. They don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care – Jim Calhoun. I’d rather be looked than overlooked. – Mae West. In the blue grass region, A paradox was born:

The corn was full of kernals And the colonels full of corn. – John Marshall. Some have an idea that the reason we in this country discard things so readily is because we have so much. The facts are exactly opposite – the reason we have so much is simply because we discard things so readily. – Alfred P. Solan. Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things. – Jacquelyn Small. One should eat to live, not live to eat. – Cicero. In the 70’s I threw in the 90’s; In the 90’s I throw in the 70’s. – Frank Tanana. I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling. – Adlai Stevenson.

There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true. – Niels Bohr. The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursues him. – Voltaire. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. – Alfred North Whitehead. When religion was strong andscienceweak, men mistook magic for medicine; Now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. – Thomas Szaz Our very hopes belied our fears, ur fears our hopes belied; We thought her dying when she slept, and sleeping when she died. – Thomas Hood. She would rather fool with a bee than be with a fool. – John Kendrick Bangs.

This isn’t a bar for writers with a drinking problem; it’s for drinkers with a writing problem. – Judy Joice. Infantile love follows the principle: ” I love because I am loved. ” Mature love follows the principle: ” I am loved because I love. ” Immature love says: ” I love you because I need you. ” Mature love says: ” I need you because I love you. ” – Erich Fromm. But many that are first hall be last and the last shall be first. – Jesus (Bible: Matthew 7: 6). Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, Onomatopoeia An onomatopoeia (sometimes written as onomatopœia) ( pronunciation (US) (help·info), from the Greek ??? µat? p??? a;[1] ??? µa for ” name”[2] and p???? for ” I make”,[3] adjectival form: ” onomatopoeic” or ” onomatopoetic”) is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Onomatopoeia (as an uncountable noun) refers to the property of such words.

Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ” oink”, ” meow”, ” roar” or ” chirp”. Onomatopoeias are not the same across all languages; they conform to some extent to the broader linguistic system they are part of; hence the sound of a clock may be tick tock in English, di da in Mandarin, or katchin katchin in Japanese. Although in the English language the term onomatopoeia means the imitation of a sound, in the Greek language the compound word onomatopoeia (??? µat? p??? a) means ” making or creating names”.

For words that imitate sounds the term ??? µ? µ? t??? echomimetico or echomimetic) is used. ??? µ? µ? t??? (echomimetico) from ??? meaning ” echo or sound” and µ? µ? t??? meaning ” mimetic or imitation”. examples My son swooshed the basketball into the net. Shuffle the paper stack again properly. Please do not whisper in the examination hall. The owl hooted as it sat in the tree. Boo. I scared you. Meow, where’s my milk, cried the cat. The jangle of her bracelets caught his attention. Click, click. She made a sound with her tongue to show her displeasure. The rustle of the leaves startled the kids. Pitter-patter rain drops are falling from the sky.

Myteachertold me to shoosh, because I was making too much noise. The door creaked open in the old mansion. The tires of the sports car halted with a loud screech. Harry mumbled in his mouth that he was not thirsty. The birds like to tweet outside my window. Drip, drip, drip, went the faucet all day long. Grandma loves to hear the pitter-patter of little feet around the house. Zip goes the jacket. The Nickelodeon cartoon ‘Kablam’s implied to be onomatopoeic as a crash. The marble game ‘KerPlunk’ is onomatopoeia for the sound of the marbles dropping when sticks have been removed.