figure of speech, any intentional deviation from literal statement or common usage

that emphasizes, clarifies, or embellishes both written and spoken language. Forming

an integral part of language, figures of speech are found in oral literatures as well as in
polished poetry and prose and in everyday speech. Greeting-card rhymes, advertising
slogans, newspaper headlines, the captions of cartoons, and the mottoes of families and
institutions often use figures of speech, generally for humorous, mnemonic, or eye-
catching purposes. The argots of sports, jazz, journalism, business, politics, or any
specialized groups abound in figurative language.
Common figures of speech and their use
Most figures in everyday speech are formed by extending the vocabulary of what is
already familiar and better known to what is less well known. Thus metaphors (implied
resemblances) derived from human physiology are commonly extended to nature or
inanimate objects as in the expressions “the mouth of a river,” “the snout of a glacier,”
“the bowels of the earth,” or “the eye of a needle.” Conversely, resemblances to natural
phenomena are frequently applied to other areas, as in the expressions “a wave of
enthusiasm,” “a ripple of excitement,” or “a storm of abuse.” Use of simile (a
comparison, usually indicated by “like” or “as”) is exemplified in “We were packed in the
room like sardines” or “He is as slow as molasses.” Personification (speaking of an
abstract quality or inanimate object as if it were a person) is exemplified in “Money
talks”; metonymy (using the name of one thing for another closely related to it), in “The
power of the crown was mortally weakened,” where “crown” means “king” or
“queen”); synecdoche (use of a part to imply the whole), in expressions such as “brass”
for high-ranking military officers or “hard hats” for construction workers.

Other common forms of figurative speech are hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration for the

sake of effect), as in “I’m so mad I could chew nails”; the rhetorical question (asked for
effect, with no answer expected), as in “How can I express my thanks to
you?”; litotes (conscious understatement in which emphasis is achieved by negation), as
in “It’s no fun to be sick”; and onomatopoeia (imitation of natural sounds by words), in
such words as “crunch,” “gurgle,” “plunk,” and “splash.”

Almost all the figures of speech that appear in everyday speech may also be found
in literature. In serious poetry and prose, however, their use is more fully conscious,
more artistic, and much more subtle; it thus has a stronger intellectual and emotional
impact, is more memorable, and sometimes contributes a range and depth of
association and suggestion far beyond the scope of the casual colloquial use of imagery.
The Old and New Testaments of the Bible—an example of a work rich
in simile, metaphor, personification, and parallelism (which is often used in Hebrew
poetry)—is an important literary influence.

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 Literary Terms (Part Three) Quiz

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The five major categories

In European languages, figures of speech are generally classified in five major
categories: (1) figures of resemblance or relationship, (2) figures of emphasis or
understatement, (3) figures of sound, (4) verbal games and gymnastics, and (5) errors.
The first category comprises simile; metaphor; kenning (a concise compound or
figurative phrase replacing a common noun, especially in Old Germanic, Old Norse, and
Old English poetry), as in “whale-path” or “swan road” for “sea,” or “God’s beacon” for
“sun”; conceit (usually a simile or metaphor that forms an extremely ingenious or
fanciful parallel between apparently dissimilar or incongruous objects or situations), as
in the Petrarchan conceit, which was popular with Renaissance writers of sonnets, a
hyperbolic comparison most often made by a suffering lover of a beautiful beloved to
some physical object—e.g., lips to cherries; parallelism (wherein phrases, sentences, and
paragraphs are arranged so that they balance one element with another of equal
importance and similar wording), as in Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Studies”: “Reading
maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man”; personification;
metonymy; synecdoche; and euphemism (using a mild word or group of words instead
of one that is unpleasant or offensive), as in “passed away” instead of “died.”
Abraham Lincoln

The second category entails figures of emphasis or understatement. Examples include

hyperbole; litotes; rhetorical question; antithesis (strongly contrasting ideas placed in
sharp juxtaposition), as in the saying “Art is long, and Time is
fleeting”; climax (achieved by the arrangement of units of meaning—words, phrases,
clauses, or sentences—in an ascending order of importance), as in a line from
Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “of the people, by the people, for the
people”; bathos (an unsuccessful attempt to portray pathos in art, sometimes
intentionally by authors for comedic effect and sometimes unintentionally), as
in William Wordsworth’s attempt to arouse pity for the old huntsman in “Simon Lee,”
which is defeated by the following lines:

Few months of life has he in store

As he to you will tell,
For still, the more he works, the more
Do his weak ankles swell.

Other figures of emphasis or understatement comprise paradox (an apparently self-

contradictory statement in order to arrest attention and provoke fresh thought), as
in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s widely known principle “Less is more”; oxymoron (a
word or group of words that is self-contradicting), as in “bittersweet”;
and irony (wherein the real meaning of a statement is concealed or contradicted), as
in Jane Austen’s famous opening to Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally
acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a
wife.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., at the March on Washington

The third category consists of figures of sound, e.g., alliteration (the repetition of

consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables), as in “dead as a
doornail”; repetition (use of the same word or phrase again and again for emphasis), as
in a part of King Richard’s monologue before the final battle in William
Shakespeare’s Richard III:

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.

Other devices of sound entail onomatopoeia and anaphora (the repetition of a word or

phrase at the beginning of several sentences or clauses), as in Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech:

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
The fourth category comprises verbal games and gymnastics. These include pun (a
humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest different meanings or applications,
or a play on words), as the dying Mercutio quips in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man”; and anagram (the
transposing of the letters of a word or group of words to produce other words that
possess meaning, preferably bearing some logical relation to the original), as in Florence
Nightingale into “Flit on, cheering angel.”

The fifth category consists of errors, including malapropism (verbal blunder in which

one word is replaced by another similar in sound but different in meaning), as when
Amy, the youngest of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, grumbles
that her classmates “label your father if he isn’t rich” though she means “libel,” thus
illustrating her humorous efforts to sound more grown-up; periphrasis (a roundabout or
indirect manner of writing or speaking), as illustrated by Charles Dickens in the speech
of the character Wilkins Micawber, who appears in David Copperfield:

“Under the impression,” said Mr. Micawber, “that your peregrinations in this metropolis have
not as yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of
the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road—in short,” said Mr. Micawber, in another
burst of confidence, “that you might lose yourself—I shall be happy to call this evening, and
install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.”

Other errors include spoonerism (a reversal of the initial letters or syllables of two or

more words), such as “I have a half-warmed fish in my mind” (for “half-formed wish”)
and “a blushing crow” (for “a crushing blow”). Figures involving a change in sense, such
as metaphor, simile, and irony, are called tropes.
Figures of speech in non-Western languages
All languages use figures of speech, but differences of language dictate different
stylistic criteria. Japanese poetry is based on delicate structures of implication and an
entire vocabulary of aesthetic values almost untranslatable to the West. Arabic
literature is rich in simile and metaphor, but the constructions used are so different
from those familiar in the West that translation requires much adaptation. This
condition is also true of the oral literatures of Africa and of the written literatures
deriving from them.