Literary Devices (Poems)

Alliteration - Repeated consonant sound at the beginning of words or within words.

Examples: miserable morning

Allusion - a reference in one story to a well-known character or event from another story, history,
or place
Examples: The child lost her shoe like Cinderella.

Hyperbole - obvious exaggeration which is not meant to be taken literally

Example: I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!

Imagery - mental pictures which are created by descriptions of the senses, so that we can see
and feel what the character is experiencing
Example: Even the dark, shiny leaves which usually clung to the chimney of my grandmother's
house hung dry and brittle on that hot summer day.

Irony - contrast between the expected outcome and the actual way things turn out
(see Dramatic Irony)
Example: The King is a wise man. He has declared that anyone who works in the morning will be
punished, they must work at night only and sleep during the day.

Metaphor - a suggested comparison between two unlike things in order to point out a similarity;
a metaphor DOES NOT use the word like, as _ as, or than.
Example: Hot orange coals burned at the edge of the woods as the wolves watched and waited
with hungry eagerness. (the wolves' eyes are compared to orange coals because of their
brightness and color)

Onomatopoeia - words that imitate, or sound like, the actions they describe
Examples: bang, slurp, ping, slam, hiss, squish

Paradox - a statement that reveals a kind of truth although at first it seems to be self-
contradictory and untrue
Examples: It was the best mistake he ever made (he learned a lot from this error).

Personification - a description in which an object (or animal, or idea, or force of

nature) takes on human characteristics or actions
Examples: the sun hid its face behind the clouds

Pun - a humorous use of a word or phrase that has more than one meaning (or two
similarly spelled words that sound alike)
Examples: Writing with a broken pencil is pointless. (Pointless can have the meaning as ‘useless’
or since the pencil point is broken, the pencil is pointless)

Simile - a comparison between two unlike things, using like, as — as, or than in the comparison
Example: the leaf spun to the ground like a descending helicopter.

Assonance
Is the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words.
Example : The award winning actor is present at the moment.

Consonance
is the repetition, at close intervals, of the final consonants of accented syllables or important
words especially at the ends of words
Example: blank and think, strong and string

Symbol
Any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for
something larger than itself, such as a quality, an attitude, a belief, or a value.
Example : a rose if often a symbol of love.

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory words with opposing meanings.
Example: “old news,” “deafening silence,” or “organized chaos.”

Synecdoche is a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole

Example: fifty wheels ran on the road (here wheels refer to bicycles)

A transferred epithet is a figure of speech that is formed by the transfer of an epithet from the
noun (most probably the subject) it is actually meant to describe to another noun (most probably
the noun that takes the place of the object) in the sentence.
Eg: The traveller walked 10 weary miles.