Use of character and/or story elements symbolically to represent an abstraction in addition to the literal meaning.
Alliosis
Presenting alternatives.
Example: "You can eat well or you can sleep well."
Such a structure often results in the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy or the either/or fallacy.
It can create a cleverly balanced and artistic sentence.
Alliteration
Repetition of a sound in multiple words.
Example: buckets of big blue berries.
Two forms:
Consonance: Repetition of consonant sounds (e.g., many more merry men).
Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds (e.g., refresh your zest for living).
Head rhyme: If the first letters are the consonants that alliterate.
Assonance can lead to outright rhymes.
Allusion
A direct or indirect reference to something commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art.
Ambiguity
The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage.
Anaphora
Repetition of beginning clauses.
Example: Churchill's "We shall not flag or fail…We shall".
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost shall be."
Anecdote
A short narrative detailing particulars of an interesting episode or event.
Antithesis
Contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence.
Can be a contrast of opposites (e.g., "Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it.") or a contrast of degree (e.g., "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind.").
Aposiopesis
Breaking off as if unable to continue.
Example: "The fire surrounds them while – I cannot go on."
Apostrophe
Addressing someone or some abstraction that is not physically present.
Examples: "Oh, Death, be not proud" (John Donne), "Ah, Mr. Newton, you would be pleased to see how far we have progressed in physics."
Asyndeton
Using no conjunctions to create an effect of speed or simplicity.
Examples: Veni. Vidi. Vici. (I came. I saw. I conquered.), Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt.
Catachresis
A completely impossible figure of speech, especially one breaking the limits of realism or grammar.
Examples: "Joe will kittens when he hears this!", "I will sing victories for you.", "blind mouths."
Example from "Pumped Up Kicks": "I reason with my cigarette."
Evokes the idea of the 'cool' kid using personal style instead of persuasive argument.
Evokes the imagery of torture.
Closely related to hyperbole and synesthesia.
Chiasmus
From Greek, "cross" or "x".
A literary scheme involving a specific inversion of word order; deliberately turning parallelism inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern.
Example: "By day the frolic, and the dance by night."
The sequence is typically a b b a.
Examples: "I lead the life I love; I love the life I lead.", "Naked I rose from the earth; to the grave I fall clothed."
Often overlaps with antimetabole.
Colloquial/Colloquialism
The use of slang or informalities in speech or writing for a conversational tone.
Not generally acceptable for formal writing.
Connotation
The nonliteral, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning.
Denotation
The strict, literal, dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotion, attitude, or color.
Diction
The writer’s word choices, especially with regard to correctness, clarity, or effectiveness.
Ellipsis
Omitting a word implied by the previous clause.
Example: "The European soldiers killed six of the remaining villagers, the American soldiers, eight."
Enallage
Intentionally misusing grammar to characterize a speaker or create a memorable phrase.
Examples: "We was robbed!", "You pays your money, and you takes your chances."
Epanalepsis
Repeating a word from the beginning of a clause at the end of the clause.
Examples: "Year chases year.", "Man's inhumanity to man.", "Common sense is not so common.", "Blood will have blood.", "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life."
Epistrophe (Antistrophe)
Repetition of a concluding word or endings.
Example: "He's learning fast; are you earning fast?"
When the epistrophe focuses on sounds rather than entire words, we normally call it rhyme.
Euphemism
A more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept.
Erotema (Rhetorical Question)
Asking a rhetorical question to the reader.
Example: "What should honest citizens do?"
Homily
Any serious talk, speech, or lecture involving moral or spiritual advice.
Hyperbole
Exaggeration.
Examples: "His thundering shout could split rocks.", "Yo' mama's so fat…"
Hypophora
A figure of speech in which a writer raises a question and then immediately provides an answer to that question.
Example: "Thirty-one cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on window sills and shelves. Who are they for? Friends."
Invective
An emotionally violent, verbal denunciation or attack using strong, abusive language.
Juxtaposition
When two words, phrases, images, or ideas are placed close together or side-by-side for comparison or contrast.
Litotes
A special form of understatement in which a point is affirmed by negating its opposite.
Example: “He’s no fool.”
Meiosis
Understatement (opposite of exaggeration).
Example: "I was somewhat worried when the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw." (i.e., I was terrified).
Litotes is a type of meiosis in which the writer uses a statement in the negative to create the effect.
Example: "You know, Einstein is not a bad mathematician." (i.e., Einstein is a good mathematician.)
Metaphor
A comparison between two unlike things that does NOT use the words like or as.
Examples: the ladder of success (i.e, success is a ladder), "Carthage was a beehive of buzzing workers.", "This is your brain on drugs."
Metaplasmus
A type of neologism in which misspelling a word creates a rhetorical effect.
Examples: Spelling "dog" as "dawg" to emphasize dialect; adding -let or -ling to the end of the word, referring to a deity as a "godlet", or a prince as a "princeling"; adding -ette to the end of the word, creating a smurfette or a corvette; modernizing something old, the writer might turn the Greek god Hermes into the Hermenator.
Metonymy
Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea.
Examples: CROWN for royalty; the PEN is mightier than the SWORD.
"If we cannot strike offenders in the heart, let us strike them in the wallet."
Referring to the movie-making industry as "Hollywood.", referring to the collective decisions of the United States government as "Washington," or the "White House."
Neologism
Creating a new or imaginary word.
Example: Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky".
Onomatopoeia
Echoic words or words that create an auditory effect similar to the sound they represent.
Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense.
Examples: jumbo shrimp, sophisticated rednecks, and military intelligence.
"without laws, we can have no freedom."
"Cowards die many times before their deaths"
Paradox
A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth.
Parallelism
When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length.
Example: "King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable."
Parody
A work that closely imitates the style or content of another with specific aim of comic effect and/or ridicule.
Periodic Sentence
A sentence that presents its central meaning in a main clause at the end and is preceded by a dependent clause.
Example: “Ecstatic with my AP score, I let out a loud, joyful shout!”
Personification
Giving human qualities to inanimate objects.
Examples: "The ground thirsts for rain; the wind whispered secrets to us”.
Polysyndeton
Using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect.
Example: "This term, I am taking biology and English and history and math and music and physics and sociology."
Pun
A pun twists the meaning of words.
Homonymic Puns -- "Johnny B. Good" is a pun for "Johnny be good."
Sound similarities -- "Casting perils before swains" (instead of "pearls before swine").
Repetition
The action of repeating something that has already been said or written.
Sarcasm
Bitter, caustic language that is meant to hurt or ridicule someone or something.
Satire
A work that targets human vices and follies or social institutions and conventions for reform or ridicule.
Simile
A comparison between two unlike things that use the words “like” or “as” to make the comparison.
Example: "Her skin was like alabaster."
Syllogism
A deductive system of formal logic that presents two premises (first called “major” and the second called “minor) that inevitably lead to a sound conclusion.
Example:
Major premise: All men are mortal.
Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Synecdoche
Using a part of a physical object to represent the whole object.
Examples: "Twenty eyes watched our every move" (i.e., ten people watched our every move), "A hungry stomach has no ears" (La Fontaine).
Synesthesia
Mixing one type of sensory input with another in an impossible way, such as speaking of how a color sounds, or how a smell looks.
Examples: "The scent of the rose rang like a bell through the garden.", "I caressed the darkness with cool fingers."
Syntax
The way an author chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Tone
The author or speaker’s attitude toward the subject.
Zeugma
One verb using different objects.
If this changes the verb's initial meaning, the zeugma is sometimes called syllepsis:
Examples: "If we don't hang together, we shall hang separately" (Ben Franklin), "The queen of England sometimes takes advice in that chamber, and sometimes tea.", ". . . losing her heart or her necklace at the ball" (Alexander Pope), "She exhausted both her audience and her repertoire."