Literary Devices

The repetition of an initial consonant sound

A reference to a person, place, poem, books, events etc which is not part of the story, that the author expects the reader will recognize

The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clause or verses (contrast with epiphora and epistrophe)

The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in a balanced phrase

Breaking off discours to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character

Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words

A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but the parts reversed.

The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considering offensively explicit

A extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heighted effects

A techniques in which the intended meaning of a statement differs from the meaning that the words appear to express

Involves an incongruity between what is expected or intended and what actually occurs

An effect produced by a narrative in which the audience knows more about present or future circumstance than a character in the story

A figure of speech consisting of an understanding in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite

An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common

A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it’s closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it

The use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to

A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side

A statement that appears to be contradicting itself, but it's often true

A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities

A play on word, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words

A stated comparison (usually formed with “like” or “as”) between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have a certain qualities in common

A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole

A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker deliberately make a situation seem less important or serious than it is