Vocabulary Terms: Figures of Speech

Apostrophe

Direct address to an inanimate, missing, or dead object or person

Meiosis

Understatement usually achieved by referring to less importance

Synesthesia

Expressing one sensation in terms of another

“example: taste the pain”

Verbal Irony

Words are ironic; usually wants to mean the. opposite of what was said

Cosmic Irony

Irony of fate; contrast between character desire and how fate treats them

Antimetabole

Pairing of two mirrored phrases usually for effect

Litotes

Form of understatement by negotiating an affirmation

Metonymy

Type of metaphor replacing with something similar

Understatement

Deliberate misinterpretation of less degree

Dramatic Irony

What a reader knows versus what the character knows

Conceit

An elaborate extended metaphor or simile

Malapropism

Hilarious misuse of a word

Oxymoron

Pairing of two opposites;

example: “jumbo shrimp”

Tropes

Twist or turn the meaning of a word

Principles: irony, metaphor, metonymy, personification, similes, and synecdoche

Euphemism

Using a softer, gentler word instead of the hard truth

Paradox

Statement initially seems contradictory, but makes sense later with more information; the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know

Anthropomorphism

Giving human form to something inhuman