Simile
Comparison using like or as.
Metaphor
Comparison between two objects.
Analogy
Comparison between two things to make a concept easier to understand or put something in a different perspective
Personification
Giving human-like qualities to an inanimate object.
Pun
A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning
Euphemism
A mild word or phrase substituted for a more offensive, unpleasant, or crude one
Malapropism
Misusing words to create a comic effect or characterize the speaker as being too confused, ignorant, or flustered to use correct diction
Aphorism
A pithy observation that contains a general truth
Metonymy
A thing or concept called not by its own name but rather by the name of something that is associated with that thing in meaning or concept
Synecdoche
When a part of an object represents the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part.
Apostrophe
To address someone who is not there or to address a personified object.
Allusion
Indirect reference to a well-known person, place, book, or event.
Ellipsis
Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.
Foreshadowing
When the author gives a hint on future event
Synesthesia
A rhetorical trope involving shifts in imagery. I involves taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell touch, taste) and commingling it with another separate sense in an impossible way. In the resulting figure of speech, we end up talking about how a color sounds, or how a smell looks.
Rhetorical Question
A question that is not intended to be answered
Hyperbole
Exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally.
Understatement
Presenting something as smaller, worse, or less important than it really is
Parallelism
Figure or speech in which two or mort elements of a sentence (or series of sentences) have the same grammatical structure
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of the sentence
Epistrophe
The repetition of a word at the end of two or more sentences.
Juxtaposition
Placement of two things closely together to emphasize similarities or differences
Antithesis
Figure of speech that juxtaposes two contrasting or opposing ideas, usually within parallel grammatical structures
Oxymoron
Two seemingly contradictory words are placed together because their unlikely combination reveals a deeper truth
Paradox
Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions
Anadiplosis
A literary term for the repetition of the last word in one line of clause, to begin the next.
Epanalepsis
Figure of speech defined by the repetition of the initial word or words of a clause or sentence, at the end of the same clause or sentence
Alliteration
Repetition of consonant sounds and/or letters in a word of phrase.
Asyndeton
The omissions of conjunctions in a series of items or clauses
Polysyndeton
Process of using conjunctions frequently in a sentence and/or placed very close to each other.
Antimetabole
A verbal expression in which the second half of the sentence has the same words as the first, but the words are flipped to create a reverse statement
Chiasmus
A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures - Words do NOT repeat.
Balanced Sentence
A sentence where phrases or clauses. balance each other by their structure meaning or length.
Cumulative Sentence
Sentence where an independent clause is followed by a series of dependent clauses.
Periodic Sentence
Sentence that leaves the main clause out until the end of the sentence
Ethos
Refers to the trustworthiness or credibility of the writer or speaker to appeal to the audience
Pathos
Persuades by appealing to a person's emotions and evokes emotion from the audience in order to appeal
Logos
Writer uses facts, statistics, and logical reasoning to appeal to the audience