Top 20 Toolbox Figurative Language Terms

1
Top 20 Toolbox Figurative
Language Terms

• Learn.
• Understand.
• Utilize.

2
Alliteration

• Repetition of an initial consonant sound.
• Same sound starts a series of syllables.
• "You'll never put a better bit of butter on your
  knife.
• (advertising slogan for Country Life butter)
• "My style is public negotiations for parity,
  rather than private negotiations for position.
• (Jesse Jackson)
• "The soul selects her own society.
• (Emily Dickinson)

3
Anaphora

• Repetition of the same word or phrase at the
  beginning of successive clauses or verses.
• "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in
  France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we
  shall fight with growing confidence and growing
  strength in the air, we shall defend our Island,
  whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the
  beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
  we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
  we shall fight in the hills we shall never
  surrender.
• Winston Churchill, speech to the House of
  Commons, June 4, 1940)

4
Antithesis

• The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in
  balanced phrases.
• "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody
  doesn't like Sara Lee.
• (advertising slogan)
• "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.
• (Goethe)
• My style is public negotiations for parity,
  rather than private negotiations for position.
• (Jesse Jackson)

5
Apostrophe

• Breaking off discourse to address some absent
  person or thing, some abstract quality, an
  inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.
• "Hello darkness, my old friendI've come to talk
  with you again . . ..
• (Paul Simon, "The Sounds of Silence")
• "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou
  art.
• (John Keats)

6
Assonance

• Identity or similarity in sound between internal
  vowels in neighboring words.
• "It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.
• Advertising slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners
• "Old age should burn and rave at close of
  dayRage, rage, against the dying of the light.
• Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good
  night"

7
Chiasmus

• A verbal pattern in which the second half of an
  expression is balanced against the first but with
  the parts reversed.
• "I flee who chases me, and chase who flees
  me."(Ovid)"Fair is foul, and foul is
  fair."(William Shakespeare, Macbeth I.i)

8
Euphemism

• The substitution of an inoffensive term for one
  considered offensively explicit.
• Ground beef for ground flesh of dead cow
• pre-owned for used or second-hand
• Athlete __________________

9
Hyperbole

• An extravagant statement the use of exaggerated
  terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened
  effect.
• "I had so much homework, I needed a pickup truck
  to carry all my books home!"

10
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.
• "It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon,
  launder became a dirty word."(William Zinsser)

11
Litotes

• A figure of speech consisting of an
  understatement in which an affirmative is
  expressed by negating its opposite.
• "The grave's a fine a private place,But none, I
  think, do there embrace."(Andrew Marvell, "To
  His Coy Mistress")
• "for life's not a paragraphAnd death I think is
  no parenthesis"(e.e. cummings, "since feeling is
  first")

12
Metaphor

• An implied comparison between two unlike things
  that actually have something important in common.
  
• The senator...was asked how she will tackle Sen.
  Obama's tight grip on the youth vote.
• On the Presidential Campaign Trail (Associated
  Press)
• Candidates see rocky ride ahead (Baltimore Sun)
• Barack's bandwagon keeps on rolling
  (EuroNews.net)
• Rocky Roads To The Nominations (Town Hall)

13
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.
• The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of
  our savings.

14
Onomatopoeia

• The formation or use of words that imitate the
  sounds associated with the objects or actions
  they refer to.
• "Tlot-tlot tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The
  horse-hoofs ringing clearTlot-tlot, tlot-tlot,
  in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not
  hear?(Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman")
• "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it
  is."(slogan of Alka Seltzer, U.S.)

15
Oxymoron

• A figure of speech in which incongruous or
  contradictory terms appear side by side.
• "A yawn may be defined as a silent yell."(G.K.
  Chesterton)
• "O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!"(John
  Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions)
• "That building is a little bit big and pretty
  ugly."(James Thurber)
• "'I want to move with all deliberate haste,' said
  President-elect Barack Obama at his first, brief
  press conference after his election, 'but I
  emphasize "deliberate" as well as "haste."'

16
Paradox

• A statement that appears to contradict itself.
• "The swiftest traveler is he that goes
  afoot."(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
• "War is peace.""Freedom is slavery.""Ignorance
  is strength."(George Orwell, 1984)

17
Personification

• A figure of speech in which an inanimate object
  or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or
  abilities.
• "The road isn't built that can make it breathe
  hard!"(advertising slogan for Chevrolet
  automobiles)
• "Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There
  was no one there."(proverb quoted by Christopher
  Moltisanti in The Sopranos)
• "Oreo Milks favorite cookie."(slogan on a
  package of Oreo cookies)

18
Pun

• A play on words, sometimes on different senses of
  the same word and sometimes on the similar sense
  or sound of different words.
• "When it rains, it pours.
• advertising slogan for Morton Salt
• "Look deep into our ryes.
• slogan of Wigler's Bakery
• "When it pours, it reigns.
• slogan for Michelin tires

19
Simile

• A stated comparison (usually formed with "like"
  or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar
  things that have certain qualities in common.
• "She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals
  with meat.
• James Joyce, "The Boarding House"
• "Life is like an onion You peel it off one layer
  at a time, and sometimes you weep.
• Carl Sandburg

20
Synechdoche

• 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 from
  it.
• "The sputtering economy could make the difference
  if you're trying to get a deal on a new set of
  wheels.
• Al Vaughters, WIVB.com, November 21, 2008
• All hands on deck.
• 9/11
• Brazil won the soccer match.

21
Understatement

• A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker
  deliberately makes a situation seem less
  important or serious than it is.
• "The grave's a fine and private place,But none,
  I think, do there embrace.
• Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
• "I have to have this operation . . .. It isn't
  very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on
  the brain.
• Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye, by J.
  D. Salinger
• "I am just going outside and may be some time.
• Captain Lawrence Oates, Antarctic explorer,
  before walking out into a blizzard to face
  certain death, 1912