bgThe Top 20 Figures

  1. Alliteration
    Repetition of an initial consonant sound.

"You'll never put a better bit of butter on your knife."
(advertising slogan for Country Life butter) ~ "The soul selects her own society." (Emily Dickinson)

  1. Anaphora
    Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.

"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." (Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely) ~

"I don't like you sucking around, bothering our citizens, Lebowski. I don't like your jerk-off name. I don't like your jerk-off face. I don't like your jerk-off behavior, and I don't like you, jerk-off."
(Policeman in The Big Lebowski)

  1. Antithesis
    The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."
(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

  1. Apostrophe
    Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.

"O western wind, when wilt thou blow / That the small rain down can rain?" (anonymous, 16th c.)

"Hello darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again . . .."
(Paul Simon, "The Sounds of Silence")

  1. Assonance
    Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.

"Those images that yet / Fresh images beget, /That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea."
(W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium")

"The spider skins lie on their sides, translucent and ragged, their legs drying in knots."
(Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm)

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

"Nice to see you, to see you, nice!" (British TV entertainer Bruce Forsyth) ~ "You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget." (Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 2006) ~ "I flee who chases me, and chase who flees me." (Ovid)

  1. Euphemism
    The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.

Mr. Prince: We'll see you when you get back from image enhancement camp. Martin Prince: Spare me your euphemisms! It's fat camp, for Daddy's chubby little secret! ("Kamp Krusty," The Simpsons, 1992)

  1. Hyperbole
    An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.

“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

  1. Irony
    The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

"It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, launder became a dirty word."
(William Zinsser) ~ "I'm aware of the irony of appearing on TV in order to decry it."
(Sideshow Bob, The Simpsons)

  1. Litotes
    A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.

"We are not amused." (attributed to Queen Victoria) ~ "'Not a bad day's work on the whole,' he muttered, as he quietly took off his mask, and his pale, fox-like eyes glittered in the red glow of the fire. 'Not a bad day's work.'" (Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905)

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

Between the lower east side tenements the sky is a snotty handkerchief."
(Marge Piercy, "The Butt of Winter") ~ "The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner." (Cynthia Ozick, "Rosa") ~ "But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill." (William Sharp, "The Lonely Hunter")

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

"I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again." (Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep) ~ The White House asked the television networks for air time on Monday night. ~"Detroit is still hard at work on an SUV that runs on rain forest trees and panda blood." (Conan O'Brien)

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

"I'm getting married in the morning! Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime." (Lerner and Loewe, "Get Me to the Church on Time," My Fair Lady)

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

"A yawn may be defined as a silent yell." (G.K. Chesterton) ~ "O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!" (John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions) ~ "That building is a little bit big and pretty ugly." (James Thurber)

  1. Paradox
    A statement that appears to contradict itself.

"The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden) ~ "If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness." (Alexander Smith)

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

"The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his neon claws!"
(Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)

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

A vulture boards a plane, carrying two dead possums. The attendant looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger." ~ "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." (Groucho Marx)

  1. Simile
    A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.

"He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow."
(George Eliot, Adam Bede)

  1. Synechdoche
    A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.

All hands on deck. ~ General Motors announced cutbacks. ~ "Take thy face hence." (William Shakespeare, Macbeth) ~ 9/11 ~ white-collar criminals

  1. Understatement
    A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.

"It's just a flesh wound." (Black Knight, after having both of his arms cut off, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail)