Rhetorical devices

Alliteration: repetition of the same sound at the beginning of several nearby words.

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be (Let it be, The Beatles)

Assonance: repetition of the same vowel sound in several nearby words, but not a the beginning of the word.

And so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling–my darling–my life and my bride

Consonance: repetition of a pattern of consonants

She sells seashells by the sea shore

Onomatopoeia: word imitates natural wounds

 The horse’s hooves clip-clopped on the cobblestones (narration)

Metaphor: comparison between two unrelated realities by saying one is or is like the other.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune –without the words,
And never stops at all.

Irony: language device in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words (verbal irony) or in a situation in which there is an incongruity between what is expected and what occurs (dramatic irony).

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife

Sarcasm: divergence between what is said and what is meant, but less subtle than irony.

A beautiful young nymph going to bed

Pun or paronomasia: play on words

The importance of being Earnest

Hyperbole: extreme exaggeration for emphasis or to create an ironic effect

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street

Litote: understatement especially one in which a positive statement expressed by negating its opposite expression.

I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies…

Synecdoche: figure of speech which substitutes the part of the whole. Also call something by the name of the material it is made of.

All hands on deck!

Metonymy: to substitute one term for another with which it is closely associated.

The pen is mightier than the sword (pen: writing; sword: warfare)

Antithesis: opposing ideas are placed in parallel grammatical structures

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.

Oxymoron: juxtaposes apparently contradictory terms

(…) so cunningly simple.

She accepted it as the kind cruelty of surgeon's knife.

Oxymoron: juxtaposes apparently contradictory terms

Found missing

Open secret

Small crowd

Pretty ugly

Paradox: statement that seems absurd turns out to express a possible truth.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

Hyperbaton: an inversion of the normal order of words, especially for the sake of emphasis

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you

Parallelism: the use of similar grammatical structures for related words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence or paragraph. It's a stylistic device that creates a rhythm, balance, and emphasis

Easy come, easy go

Chiasmus: a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Anaphora: a rhetorical device where a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive sentences or clauses.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land