Figure of Speech

Figure of speech

Allegory: (Personification) form of story which operates on more than one level. It has a surface significance and a deeper significance below the surface. Characters – personify or represent a vice or virtue. Common nouns – capitalized – Sloth (Faerie Queene) Popular in the middle ages.

Alliteration: repetition of initial sounds or letters in a sequence of words; or, in verse, of stressed syllables. (in poetry – rhyme)

Love laughs at locksmiths
A cat may look at a king
A miss is as good as a mile
Every dog has his day.

Anacoluthan: (lacking sequence) in a sentence - a fresh construction is adopted before the original is complete.

I’d like to introduce – I don’t think you are listening to me.

Analogy: a kind of Simile
Inference of resemblance between two items which are equated or compared.

Anti-climax: (Bathos) a sudden descent from the lofty or sublime to the trivial/ or ridiculous. Deliberate anticlimax has a comic or satiric effect in good writing.

A man, a master, a marvel ..........., a mouse

Anti-thesis: a striking opposition or contrast of ideas.
Words are opposed but balanced.

Quite succinct – action, not words
Many in haste repent at leisure.
Hair today, bald tomorrow!

Apostrophe – it’s a kind of rhetorical address or speech to an absent listener. ( in the sense that no answer is expected)

Liberty, what things are done in thy name!
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Assonance: repetition of two or more identical vowel sounds.
It is always involved in rhyme (as in feet/steer/steam; spin/skip/grid; red/hen/held; see/flee; red/dead)

Bathos: the term for a passage that is meant to be solemn and impressive, but which fails to live up to its intention because of some textual incongruity. The result is often a ludicrous anticlimax.

“The piteous news, so much it shocked her she quite forgot to send the doctor.”

Catch Phrase: slogan or quotation (often a misquotation) usually from an actor or politician or an advertisement and popularised by much use.

There is no alternative. (Margaret Thatcher)
A week is a long time in politics. ( Herold Wilson)

Clerihew: is a humorous, four-line light verse AABB deals with a person named in the first line.
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium

Clichés: (Dead Metaphor) stereotyped, or hackneyed, or trite phrase or expression, courtesy fillers or formulas in polite unrehearsed conversation.

Word: ‘nice’ (cliché adjective) (confusing to non native speakers)
Phrase: at this point in time
Parts and parcel
Intents and purposes
Conspicuous by its absence
Tender mercies
From time immemorial
Figure of speech: come hell or high water, at death’s door, swing of the pendulum, thin end of the wedge, white elephant, as old as the hills
Formulas: have a nice day, how do you do?
In politics: the war against inflation, stand on our own feet, light at the end of the tunnel, the green shoots of economic recovery
Reversing clichés: nothing succeeds like excess,
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Her hair has gone quite gold with grief.

Colloquialism: informal everyday speech including slang.
(Idiom) at a loose end – nothing to do.
At the double – very quickly.
Chew the fat with someone – chat with someone

Doubles: pairs of words that habitually go together.

Repetition of the words: again and again, by and by
Repetition of the meaning: hale and hearty; hue and cry
Alliteration: kith and kin, part and parcel, time and tidy
Opposites: this and that, on and off, give and take, here and there
Rhyme or assonance: high and dry, wear and tear, out and about, fair and square

.

Epigram: {a short inscription (on a tomb)} pithy saying effective by its wit, ingenuity, brevity and balance.
(Coleridge: what is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul)
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
We learn from listening that we do not learn from listening
Men can be analysed, women merely adored.
Ephemism: an accurate but explicit word is substituted with a gentler and distasteful term.
(not same as Meiosis/Litotes)
Death, illness, mental handicap, old age, obesity, poverty, dishonesty and sex.
Nukespeak
Acrpmu,s – to gloss over the obscenities to which they refer.
ICBM – inter continental ballistic missile
Vertically challenged/gender realignment.
Haiku: a short Japanese poetic form, in three unrhymed lines with an exact number of syllables per line. The syllabic pattern is 5 – 7 – 5. Traditional subject matter – nature (thoughtful – word picture.
Hyperbole: overstatement (exaggeration/extravagant statement)
“Here is the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this lille hand.” Lady Macbeth
He ran like lightening.
We are dying of hunger. (to mean ‘we merely wish to go for lunch.)
Idiom: expressions peculiar to the natives.
To let the cat come out of the bag. (to revel a secret)
How did you find Stratford? Great – I loved it. I did not like the place at all.
Opaque: a shot in the arm (where there is no resemblance between the meaning of the individual word and the meaning of the idioms.
Semi-opaque: part of the phrase retains a literal meaning.
Transparent: (meaning can be guessed from the meaning of the parts.
Innuendo: something is hinted at, but not started openly. It works by implication rather than by direst statement. (veiled allusion, sometimes malicious or equivocal, reflecting on a person’s character.
Irony: speaker says one thing but implies the opposite.
That will fetch a good price.
A good price that will fetch! (the opposite of the first)
That’s a great help. (I don’t think so)!
Much good that will do!
You’re a fine cook/ A fine cook you are!
Dramatic irony: when a character says something which is meaningful to him/herself on one level but has a different meaning on a different level for the reader/audience.
Oh! Hell Gate! (Shakespeare’s Macbeth)
Tragic irony is a reprimand of dramatic irony.
Limerick: A humorous, five-line light verse form rhyming AABBA usually 3 stressed beats in lines A and 2 stressed beats in line B
There was an old man of Darjeeling. A
Who got on a train bound for Ealing. A
It said on the door, B
‘Please dont spit on the floor.’ B
So he got up and spat on the ceiling. A
Litotes: a special kind of understatement, in which a positive statement is achieved by denying something negative – i.e., something is expressed by denying the opposite.
He isnt a bad swimmer. (= He is quite a good swimmer.)
This is no easy task. (= It’s a difficult task.)
Her life was no bed of roses. ( =she had a hard life.)
No mean city (=a great city, in St Paul’s remark about Rome.)
By no means negligible
In no small measures.
Malapropism: incorrect use of a word, often a scholarly word.
Alligator – allegory
Allusion – illusion
Hydrostatics – hysteria
She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
Meiosis: deliberate understatement, for the sake of effect. (to emphasize the size, importance, etc. of what is apparently belittled.)
Colloquial and quintessentially English figure of speech Litotes
She’s rather nice. (=I like her very much)
He made a decent contribution. (a generous one)
This is some game. (It’s an epic game)

Metaphor: the process of substitution yields a metaphor. Simile is comparison and metaphor is substitution.
Appositional metaphors: My wife, a rose among thorns.
Vocative or apostrophic metaphors: My flower, my darling!
Verbal metaphors: The minutes crept by slowly.
She was rooted to the spot in terror.
The blows rained down on the innocent victim.
Prepositional metaphors: The apple of my eye.
The knife of pain and betrayal.
Adjectival metaphors: With leaden feet; a flaming temper; a story silence.
Adverbial metaphors: He was caught red-handed.
A grief ago.
Metaphors can be analysed for the kind of work they do.
Animistic metaphors: inanimate nouns receive animate qualities.
A good book is the test of friends.
Concretive metaphors: abstractions are given substances.
Music is the brandy of the damned!
Library is the glorious feast!
Humanising metaphors: Non human nouns are given human attributes.
Personification
A babbling brook.
An angry sky.
April is the cruellest month.
Dehumanising metaphors: People are given non-human characteristics.
Christ the tiger
Deifying metaphors: divine qualities are attributed to people or things.
The almighty dollar.
The eternal triangle.
More broadly paradoxical metaphors: qualities associated with one thing are attributed to another.
To a green thought in a green shade.
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
Metonymy: refers to someone or something via an associated item.
The crown (the monarchy)
Downing Street (the PM)
King of the ring. (=boxing)
He has taken to the bottle. (=alcoholic liquor)
She was called to the bar. (=the profession of a barrister)
Metre (measure) – any form of measured, or regulated, rhythm. Rhythmic arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.
iambic metre unstressed – stressed shown as x/
God gives all men all earth to love. x/x/x/x/ (= 4 iambic feet)
But, since man’s heart is small x/x/x/
Ordains for each one spot shall prove x/x/x/x/
Beloved over all. x/x/x/
trochaic stressed + unstressed, shown as /x
Beauty, midnight, vision dies /x/x/x (=3.5 trochaic feet)
Let the winds of dawn that blow /x/x/x
Softly around your dreaming head /x/x/x
Such a day of sweetness show /x/x/x
anapaestic (2 unstressed + 1 stressed), shown as xx/
As the corner of wood street, when day light appears. xx/xx/xx/xx/ (=4 anapaestic feet)
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years xx/xx/xx/xx/
dactylic ( 1 stressed + 2 unstressed, shown as /xx)
Fast they come, fast they come; /xx/xx (= 2 dactylic feet)
See how they gather /xx/x
Wide waves the eagle plume, /xx/xx
Blended with heather .. /xx/x
A line with 5 feet – pentametre
6 feet – hexametre
7 feet – hepta metre
5 iambic feet – iambic penta metre
Onomatopoeia: a kind of sound symbolism if the sound of the word suggests its sense (mimic words)
babble, bubble, burble, buzz
crack, click, clack, clatter, crunch, clang, croak
fizzle, flutter etc.

sometimes Onomaatopoeic words imitate a person or an animal’s sound.
Yum yum, yuk, bow vow, cock-a-doodle-doo, cuckoo, peewit.

Onamatopoeia and alliteration are used in poems.

Oxymoron: a kind of paradox, a combination of contradictory or incongruous words, like deafening silence, bitter-sweet, sublimely bad, cruel kindness, devoted enemies
used to make a special impact either in poetry or for humorous effect.

There is no success life failure (Bob Dylan)
Include one out. (Sam Goldwyn)
Silence is wonderful to listen to. (Sam Goldwyn)

may be used cynically

military intelligence are called contradictions in terms the Yugoslavian state

Palindrome: (Sotadics = to run back again) the arrangement of Numbers, words, or lines of text to give the same message backwards as forwards.

madam, level, noon, 1991, 2002

Madam I’m Adam.
Able was I ere I saw Elba. (attr. Napoleon)
A man, a plan, a canal – Panama!)
Dog as a devil deified/ Defied lived as a god
Word palindrome (only the words are reversed)
What? So he is dead, is he? So what?

Paradox: a statement that appears contradictory or contrary to common sense, and yet is true in some other sense.

The child is father of the man. (Wordsworth)
He who would save his life must lose it. (Bible)

Personification: (Allegary)a special kind of metaphor. Some abstractions or inanimate thing is represented as a person or is given human qualities.

Giant despair
Time, the great leader

Humanising metaphor: a babbling brook
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on slough.......

Giving an adjective normally associated with a person to a non-human noun.

Proverb: is a popular saying memorably expressed. They are traditional or accepted wisdom, and to be anonymous or un-attributable.

Once bitten, twice shy.
Easy come, easy go.

Stylistic device used: Rhyme or assonance

Early to bed, early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Birds of a feather flock together.
A stitch in time saves nine.

Red sky at night – shepherd’s delight.
Red sky in the morning – shepherd’s warning


Pun: using words in such a way as to convey – and make a play on – their double meaning. People consider it childish nowadays.

Drilling holes is boring.
Marriage isn’t a word, it’s sentence.

The Egyptians received a check on the bank of the Red sea which was crossed by Moses. (Cheque)
Chemists shop window: We dispense with accuracy.
Photographer’s shop window: Our business is developing.
A Gent’s Toilet: We aim to please – you aim too please.
Back window of a bridal limousine: Aisle Altar Hymn.
Newspaper headline (ambiguous): TRAIN ON FIRE – PASSENGERS ALIGHT
School – report – card: Your son is trying. (making an effort/exasperating)

Rhetorical questions: (asked for effect and requires no answer)
An emphatic statement
Was I hungry? (i.e. I was extremely hungry.)
Do you take me for an imbecile? (i.e. i’m an intelligent person)

Sometimes it is intended as a/passing observation:
What are things coming to?

Simile: one thing or person is explicitly compared with another and is said to be like another.

I wandered lonely as a cloud... (Wordsworth)
My love is like a red rose... (Burns)
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. (Md. Ali)
Squat like a toad he sat ....... (Milton)

As happy as a lark
As big as a whale
As cool as a cucumber
As good as gold
As safe as a razor

Spoonerism: is a linguistic confusion and it is an accidental transposition of initial sounds in two or more words.

Sons of toil – tons of soil
‘You have hissed all my mystery lectures’ for you have missed all my history lectures.
Also transposition of two words: Excuse my pig – he is a friend!

Syllepsis: stylistic device – a number of words depend on, or relate to, one word, but this word does not agree with all of them in number or in gender.


Synecdoche: that puts the part for the whole or the whole for the part.

‘fifty sail’ for ‘fifty ships’
‘ninth bat’ for ‘ninth batsman’
‘parliament voted to ........’ for ‘a majority of the members of the parliament .....’
Two head are better than one.
England for UK giving offence to Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish.
Americans for Canadians and Mexicans.


Ellipsis: the leaving out of a word or words from a sentence when the meaning can be understood without it/them.

Mr. Pickwick took his hat and his leave.
She arrived in a bikini and a flood of tears.
He plays with verve and with Sheffield Wednesday.
John left Mary in the library and in a hurry.
Her mother and the fish stew upset Alice.
She filed the papers and her nails.
They opened their door and their hearts to the orphan boy.

Zeugma: stylistic device
A word, usually a verb is followed by two words which in conventional language would not be found together. An unexpected coming together of constituents, often deployed for humorous effect. It is a form of ellipsis.

I don’t think Mrs. Brown or the children know.
James and Alice each have their duties.


Analysis


Allegory
Personification


Symbolic representation of characters & events
Abstract/inanimate thing represented as a person/given human qualities


Anti climax
Bathos


Lofty/sublime to the trivial/ridiculous
Textual incongruity results in anticlimax


Apostrophe
Rhetoric questions


Rhetorical address/speech
Emphatic statement/questions


Assonance
Alliteration


Repetition of 2 or more identical vowel sounds
Repetition of initial sounds or letters (rhyme in poetry)


Hyperbole
Litotes


Overstatement
Understatement (deny the negative)


Idiom
Colloquialism
Clichés

Expressions peculiar to the natives
Informal (slang)
Phrases/expressions, courtesy fillers

Irony
Sarcasm


Implies the opposite
Implies the opposite of what they appear to mean(to mock sb)


Paradox
Oxymoron
Anti thesis

Appear contrary to common sense
Combination of contradictory or incongruous words
Opposition or contrast of ideas

Pun
Proverb
Palindrome
Onomatopoeia
Playing with words and the double meaning
Traditional wisdom
Arrangement to give the same message backwards as forwards
Sound symbolism (mimic words)
Simile
Metaphor


Comparison (a thing/person)
substitution


Spoonerism
Malapropism


Accidental transposition of initial sounds in two or more words
Incorrect use of a word often scholarly word


Synecdoche
Metonymy
Euphemism

Part for the whole and whole for the part
An associated item to mean sb/sth
Substitution with a gentler and distasteful words


Allegory: (Personification) form of story which operates on more than one level. It has a surface significance and a deeper significance below the surface. Characters – personify or represent a vice or virtue. Common nouns – capitalized – Sloth (Faerie Queene) Popular in the middle ages.

Personification: (Allegary)a special kind of metaphor. Some abstractions or inanimate thing is represented as a person or is given human qualities.

Giant despair
Time, the great leader

Humanising metaphor: a babbling brook
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on slough.......

Giving an adjective normally associated with a person to a non-human noun.

Metaphor: the process of substitution yields a metaphor. Simile is comparison and metaphor is substitution.
Appositional metaphors: My wife, a rose among thorns.
Vocative or apostrophic metaphors: My flower, my darling!
Verbal metaphors: The minutes crept by slowly.
She was rooted to the spot in terror.
The blows rained down on the innocent victim.
Prepositional metaphors: The apple of my eye.
The knife of pain and betrayal.
Adjectival metaphors: With leaden feet; a flaming temper; a story silence.
Adverbial metaphors: He was caught red-handed.
A grief ago.
Metaphors can be analysed for the kind of work they do.
Animistic metaphors: inanimate nouns receive animate qualities.
A good book is the test of friends.
Concretive metaphors: abstractions are given substances.
Music is the brandy of the damned!
Library is the glorious feast!
Humanising metaphors: Non human nouns are given human attributes.
Personification
A babbling brook.
An angry sky.
April is the cruellest month.
Dehumanising metaphors: People are given non-human characteristics.
Christ the tiger
Deifying metaphors: divine qualities are attributed to people or things.
The almighty dollar.
The eternal triangle.
More broadly paradoxical metaphors: qualities associated with one thing are attributed to another.
To a green thought in a green shade.
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.