Figurative Language and Rhetoric Terms

Anecdote

A short account of an interesting or humorous incident

Apostrophe

To address an absent or imaginary person

Analogy

Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar

Personification

Giving an inanimate object human characteristics

Synecdoche

A type of comparison, renaming something where you have a part signifying the whole or vice versa

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which the word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely asserted

Euphemism

A more agreeable way of saying something unpleasant (a pun or a play on words)

Allusion

A direct or indirect reference to something commonly known

Symbol

Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, something that stands for something else

Verbal Irony

Saying one thing and meaning another

Situational Irony

Expecting one thing to happen and the opposite does

Dramatic Irony

When the audience knows more than the characters

Mood / Atmosphere

State of mind or emotion, dominant intellectual or emotional environment or attitude

Shift

Any change in mood, tone, or tense

Attitude

The author’s intellectual position or emotion about the subject of their writing

Tone

The voice in which the attitude is brought

Rhetoric

Art or technique of persuasion