English Rhetorical Devices

Comparison using like or as.

Comparison between two objects.

Comparison between two things to make a concept easier to understand or put something in a different perspective

Giving human-like qualities to an inanimate object.

A play on two words similar in sound but different in meaning

A mild word or phrase substituted for a more offensive, unpleasant, or crude one

Misusing words to create a comic effect or characterize the speaker as being too confused, ignorant, or flustered to use correct diction

A pithy observation that contains a general truth

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

When a part of an object represents the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part.

To address someone who is not there or to address a personified object.

Indirect reference to a well-known person, place, book, or event.

Omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context.

When the author gives a hint on future event

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.

A question that is not intended to be answered

Exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally.

Presenting something as smaller, worse, or less important than it really is

Figure or speech in which two or mort elements of a sentence (or series of sentences) have the same grammatical structure

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of the sentence

The repetition of a word at the end of two or more sentences.

Placement of two things closely together to emphasize similarities or differences

Figure of speech that juxtaposes two contrasting or opposing ideas, usually within parallel grammatical structures

Two seemingly contradictory words are placed together because their unlikely combination reveals a deeper truth

Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions

A literary term for the repetition of the last word in one line of clause, to begin the next.

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

Repetition of consonant sounds and/or letters in a word of phrase.

The omissions of conjunctions in a series of items or clauses

Process of using conjunctions frequently in a sentence and/or placed very close to each other.

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

A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures - Words do NOT repeat.

A sentence where phrases or clauses. balance each other by their structure meaning or length.

Sentence where an independent clause is followed by a series of dependent clauses.

Sentence that leaves the main clause out until the end of the sentence

Refers to the trustworthiness or credibility of the writer or speaker to appeal to the audience

Persuades by appealing to a person's emotions and evokes emotion from the audience in order to appeal

Writer uses facts, statistics, and logical reasoning to appeal to the audience