Figurative Language & sound devices:

Concept:

Definition:

Examples:

Re-use of individual
words, longer phrases,
or even sentence
structures within close
proximity.

1. For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his

prime.
2. We are the hollow men / We are the
stuffed men
3. "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of
noon
4. By day thy warning ringing bell to
sound its notes / By night thy silent
signal lamps to swing.
5. Ask not what your country can do for
you, ask what you can do for your
country.
6. Love is not love / which alters when
it alteration finds / or bends with the
remover to remove (root word
repetition).

Congeries

A disorderly heaping or
piling up of many words
to intensify effect.

1. All whom war, death, age, agues,

tyrannies, / Despair, law, chance,
hath slain"
2. It's not just a razor. It's a 3-bladed
irritation-minimizing pressurecontrolling will-make-your-lady-loveyour-face-even-more sensitive
shaving machine.
3. I will not swear allegiance to one
whose character is that of a sottish,
stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish
man."

Catalogue

An extended list of
anything (more orderly
than congeries).

1. Come buy, come buy / our grapes

fresh from the vine, / Pomegranates
full and fine, / Dates and sharp
bullaces

Polysyndeton

Repetition of connectives
(and, or) between terms
in a series.

1. Rolled round in earth's diurnal

course / with rocks and stones and
trees
2. No home or light or meal to share
with friends

Omission of connectives
(and, or) in a series.

1. One heart's too small / for hunger,

cold, love, everything.
2. I came, I saw, I conquered.
3. He has provided the poor with jobs,
with opportunity, with self-respect.

Repetition

Asyndeton

Ellipsis

Inversion

Pun

Neologism

Metaphor

Any omission of a word

or phrase.

1. To err is human, to forgive divine.

2. I ordered the linguini, and he the
lobster.
3. The streets were deserted, the
doors bolted.
4. Wise men talk because they have
something to say; fools, because
they have to say something.

Deviation from normal

word order.

1. Yes I'll not shed her blood, / Nor

scar that whiter skin of hers than
snow.
2. Powerful you have become; the dark
side I sense in you.
3. She communicated with words
unspoken.

Words with similar

meanings or sounds
used to create an effect.

1. And the heaviest nuns walk in a

pure floating / of dark habits
2. Dreamers often lie.
3. I love a lassalas!
4. We must, indeed, all hang together,
or assuredly we shall all hang
separately.
5. Camping is intense. (in tents)

Making up new words.

1. Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal

lie
2. With thy sharp teeth this not
intrinsicate of life at once
untie (intricate + intrinsic)
3. This darksome burn, horseback
brown / his rollrock highroad roaring
down

The equating of two

dissimilar things for
rhetorical effect, thus
highlighting creative
similarities between the
two. (Claiming that one
thing is another thing).

1. The moon was a ghostly galleon,

tossed upon the sea
2. Katies plan to get into college was a
house of cards on a crooked table.
3. Life is a fiddler, and we all must
dance.
4. You are now in London, that great
sea whose ebb and flow at once is
quiet and loud.
5. Life is a cherished possession,
death is an inevitable loss.
6. You might be poor, your shoes might
be broken, but your mind is a
palace.

The similarity of two

things is made clear by
the use of like, as, or
other expressions.

1. How like the winter hath thy

absence been.
2. Ive seen those eyes like smoldering
April stars
3. He had such long legs that he
looked like the afternoon shadow of
somebody else.
4. The trees in the forest were as thin
as toothpicks.

Submerged
Metaphor

The equating of two

things is implied and
embedded in the
language (it is not clearly
pointed out using words
like was or is).

1. The breathless darkness, and the

narrow house / make thee to
shudder
2. The force that through the green
fuse drives the flower
3. The light flows into the bowl of the
midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.
4. Waves of spam emails inundated
his inbox.
5. The twigs were set beneath a veil of
willow trees.

Extended
Metaphor

A metaphor that
continues through
multiple sentences of
text, or that extends
throughout an entire
story.

Clich Metaphor/
Simile

A metaphor or simile that

is overused (and
therefore not very
interesting)!

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

One thing that stands for

something else. (Usually
an object that represents
an abstract concept or
idea). A symbol is NOT
given meaning through
comparison (like a
metaphor); it is given
meaning by the context
in which that symbol is
used, and the reader can
interpret it in many ways.

1. In Elie Wiesels novel Night, night is

used throughout the book to
represent death, darkness, and loss
of faith.
2. In the movie trilogy Star Wars, Luke
was dressed in light colors and Darth
Vader was dressed in black,
symbolizing good and evil.
3. When Janes boyfriend cheated on
her, she smashed her favorite mug
on the floor. When she got back
together with her boyfriend, she
glued the mug back together. - A
simple example of a mug
representing Janes relationship.

Simile

Symbol

1. All the worlds a stage, and all the

men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their
entrances, and one man in his time
plays many parts, his acts being
seven ages.
The bumpy road of life.
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
He is the apple of my eye.
The assignment was a breeze.
Black as coal.
Life is a journey

A story in which many

characters and events
are symbols that stand
for an idea/message
about human life.

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the

Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis is a
religious allegory with Aslan as a
symbol for Jesus Christ and Edmund
as Judas.
2. Animal Farm by George Orwell is an
allegory about the Communist
Revolution in Russia using animals
and characters to represent aspects
of Russian society during that time.

Personification

Describing human
qualities in non-humans.

1. Before the boat's wild scream a

heron flaps away
2. The depressed old house had not
been lived in for many years.
3. A vacation on Hawaii was calling my
name.
4. Time marches on.
5. As soon as I entered his house, I
noticed that it was lazy and
unkempt.

Meiosis

An understatement. An
expression that makes
something seem less
significant than it really is
or ought to be.

1. The little cousin is deadand none

of the country family like the
transaction.
2. The war caused us some
unpleasantness.
3. Referring to the ocean as the pond.

Referring to something
by one of its parts. (A
substitution of a part for
the whole).

1. Was this the face that launched a

thousand ships?
2. Im going to buy some wheels today
3. We need to put 500 more boots on
the ground in Nigeria.
4. There are hungry mouths to feed.
5. I should have been a pair of ragged
claws Scuttling across the floors of
silent seas.

Referring to something
by something else that
it's closely associated
with.

1. Check out my new ride. (Ride is not

a part of the automobile and
therefore does not qualify as
synecdoche).
2. The pen is mightier than the sword.
3. In the end each clan on the outlying
coasts beyond the whale-road had to
yield to him and begin to pay tribute.
(This type of metonym is called a
kenning: an often hyphenated Old
English/Norse expression that
replaces a noun).

Allegory

Synecdoche

Metonymy

Hyperbole

Bathos

An extravagant, overthe-top expression, not

intended to be taken
literally.

1. I am so hungry I could eat a horse!

2. The man was older than the hills.
3. She is every country, I am every
prince; nothing else exists.
4. People moved slowly then. There
was no hurry, for there was nowhere
to go, nothing to buy and no money
to buy it with, nothing to see outside
the boundaries of Maycomb County.

A sudden sinking of tone.

(Sinking from something
serious to something
ridiculous or something
lofty to something trivial).

1. Let us go then, you and I, When the

evening is spread against the sky,
like a patient etherized upon a table
2. Why are people born? Why do they
die? And why do they spend so much
time wearing digital watches?
3. I can picture in my mind a world
without war, without hate. And I can
picture us attacking that world
because theyd never expect it.
1.
2.
3.
4.

I am nobody.
I saw eternity the other night.
Child is father of the man
Juliet in Romeo and Juliet by William
Shakespeare says, my only love
sprung from my only hate! referring
to the fact that Romeo is the son of a
political enemy (but how can love
come from hate?)
Patriarchs of the infant world"
The wisest fool
Cruel kindness
Intense apathy"
Lets act naturally

Paradox

A statement that
contradicts itself or a
situation which seems to
defy logic, but that points
out some kind of truth.

Oxymoron

A statement that brings

together concepts that
seem to be opposites or
that seem to be opposed
to each other.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

A statement that does

not follow logically from
the statement that came
before it.

1. The apparition of these faces in the

crowd; petals on a wet, black bough.
2. I got into a car accident on a rainy
day. I don't think anyone should drive
in the rain.
3. Man one: where should we go?
Man two: give him a carrot.

To speak of one sense in

terms of another, a
confusion of the senses.

1. And taste the music of that vision

pale
2. With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz
/ Between the light and me
3. I see a voice. Now will I to the chink
(hole in the wall) to spy and I can
hear my Thisbe's face.

Non-sequitur

Synesthesia

Onomatopoeia

Alliteration

A word that mimics a

sound.

1. I heard his tattarrattat at the door.

2. Tick, tick, tick went the little hand of
the watch.
3. Over the cobbles he clattered and
clashed in the dark inn-yard, / He
tapped with his whip on the shutters,
but all was locked and barred; Tlot
tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The
horse-hooves, ringing clear.

Repetition of the first

consonant or vowel
sound of words occurring
close together in a
series.

1. Long live the weeds and the

wilderness yet.
2. The fair breeze blew, the white foam
flew, / The furrow followed free; / We
were the first that ever burst / Into
that silent sea.
3. Far over the open ocean.

Repetition of the
consonant sounds within
words occurring close
together in a series.
Consonance

(Consonance usually
refers to repetition of
sounds at the ends or in
the middle of words. If
consonant sounds
repeat at the beginning
of words, we just call it
alliteration).

1. The big frog on the log.

2. In the woods, he lived a life of
chopping and swimming and
climbing.
3. He thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts.
4. One hazy morn amid the dew
5. I strolled along the shore

Repetition of the vowel

sounds within words
occurring close together
in a series.

1. A white owl was flying high in the

night.
2. There was a rock in a box that was
locked.
3. Hear the mellow wedding bells.
4. If she love me, this believe,
5. I will die ere she shall grieve

Rhyme

The repetition of words

which have a matching
vowel-consonant
combination at the end.

1. Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered, weak and weary
2. And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
3. If she love me, this believe,
4. I will die ere she shall grieve

Internal Rhyme

When words in the

middle of lines rhyme,
rather than only at the
ends of lines.

1. It would be good to have a hood in

this weather.
2. The minute you let her under your
skin, / then you begin to make it
better.

Assonance