Figures of Speech

1. Simile – a stated comparison (formed with “like” or “as” between two

fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
Example: “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” – Langston Hughes, “Harlem”
2. Metaphor – an implied comparison between two unlike things that have
something in common.
Example: “Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –”
- Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”
3. Onomatopoeia – uses words that imitate sounds associated with objects or
actions.
Example: “The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.”
- James Joyce, “Ulysses”
4. Personification – endows human qualities or abilities to inanimate objects
or abstraction.
Example: “Ah, William, we’re wary of the weather,” said the sunflowers
shining with dew. – William Blake, “Two Sunflowers Move in the Yellow
Room”
5. Apostrophe – is addressing an absent person or thing that is an abstract,
inanimate, or inexistent character.
Example: “Death be not proud, though some have called thee.”
- John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”
6. Hyperbole – a figure of speech which contains an exaggeration for emphasis.
Example: “To make enough noise to wake the dead.”
– R. Davies, “What’s Bred in the Bone”
7. Synecdoche – a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole, and
thus something else is understood within the thing mentioned.
Example: “Give us this day out daily bread”
*Bread stands for the meals taken each day.
8. Metonymy – a figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing
is substituted for the thing itself.
Example: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
– William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”
*Lend me your ears = to pay attention; to listen
9. Oxymoron – a figure of speech which combines incongruous and
apparently contradictory words and meanings for a special effect.
Example:
“Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything! of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!”
- William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”
10. Paradox – a statement which seems on its face to be logically contradictory or
absurd yet turns out to be interpretable in a way that makes sense.
Example: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
- John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud”