Literary Devices

Alliteration

The repetition of an initial consonant sound

Allusion

A reference to a person, place, poem, books, events etc which is not part of the story, that the author expects the reader will recognize

Anaphora

The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clause or verses (contrast with epiphora and epistrophe)

Antithesis

The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in a balanced phrase

Apostrophe

Breaking off discours to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character

Assonance

Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words

Chiasmus

A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but the parts reversed.

Euphemism

The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considering offensively explicit

Hyperbole

A extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heighted effects

Verbal Irony

A techniques in which the intended meaning of a statement differs from the meaning that the words appear to express

Situational Irony

Involves an incongruity between what is expected or intended and what actually occurs

Dramatic Irony

An effect produced by a narrative in which the audience knows more about present or future circumstance than a character in the story

Litotes

A figure of speech consisting of an understanding in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite

Metaphor

An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it’s closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it

Onomatopoeia

The use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to

Oxymoron

A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side

Paradox

A statement that appears to be contradicting itself, but it's often true

Personification

A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities

Pun

A play on word, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words

Simile

A stated comparison (usually formed with “like” or “as”) between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have a certain qualities in common

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole

Meiosis

A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker deliberately make a situation seem less important or serious than it is