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- Alliteration - the sequential repetition of a similar initial sound, usually applied to consonants, usually heard in close proximate stressed syllables. A common American children's alliteration is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepppers." For more details, follow the link: More detailed discussion of Alliteration with examples.
- Apostrophe - an address or invocation to something that is inanimate--such as an angry lover who might scream at the ocean in his or her despair--or someone not present. Many are familiar with the title line of a famous Christmas carol, which exemplifies apostrophe: "O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie...". The poem "To a Skylark," by Percy B. Shelley is a good example of apostrophe: "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" he addresses the skylark. Shelley does the same in "Ode to the West Wing," when he opens with "O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being...".
- Hyperbole - overstatement characterized by exaggerated language. "I'm starving!" is usually hyperbole. The "Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson presents a famous use of hyperbole in the last line of stanza one: "By the rude bridge that arched the flood, / their flag to April's breeze unfurled, / Here once the embattled farmer's stood, / And fired the shot heard 'round the world." For more details, follow the link: Hyperbole
- Jargon - specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group. The computer industry, for example, has introduced much jargon into our vocabulary. Words such as geek, crash, interface, are all examples of jargon. Sports, too, are full of jargon. The words you are learning in my class classify as literary jargon.
- Malapropism - the unintentional use of a word that resembles the word intended but that has a different meaning. Usually authors use this for comic effects, and often to point out the simplicity, stupidity, or innocence of a character. Senior year, you will read Great Expectations, a work where Dickens has the simple and good Joe Gargery frequently use malapropism. Some examples: The girl used a fire distinguisher to put out the blaze. From Mike Tyson: I think I'm just going to fade into Bolivian. Boston Mayor Tom Menino: He was a man of great statue.
- Metonymy - a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something, as in: "The White House announced today..." where the White House is representing the president or his administration. Another famous example is "The pen is mightier than the sword." In this sentence the pen represents publishing (and we can extend that to all media) and the sword for the military. From Romeo and Juliet, when describing Friar Lawrence: "He is a man of the cloth." Songs often use this, for example, Frank Sinatra's famous "I left my heart in San Francisco" among numerous others. Here, heart is used as it is commonly associated with love. The use of metonymy and the closely related synecdoche enables the writer to replace generalities and abstractions with concrete and vivid images.
- Synecdoche - a figure of speech in which a part is used to signify the whole, as in "All hands on deck!" "Hands" stand for the whole of the sailors. From T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (read 12th grade): "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." "Ragged claws" here is synecdoche for a crab. Another example is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's line in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "The western wave was all aflame," in which "wave" substitutes for "sea." If, in Frank Sinatra's song, "heart" refers to a person left in San Francisco, it becomes synecdoche.
- In medias res - Latin for "In the midst of things"; this is a device (which Horace first used to describe Homer's Odyssey) where the author begins a book in the middle of things, without describing or explaining background information. Romeo and Juilet and The Crucible, for example, both begin in medias res.
- Assonance - a repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually those found in stressed syllables of close proximity. Samuel Coleridge used assonance when he wrote, "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan...". For more details, follow the link:Assonance.
- Consonance - the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening vowels, such as pitter-patter, pish-posh, clinging and clanging. Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream includes the lines: "Or if there were a sympathy of choice / War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it."
- Imagery – the representation of objects, feelings, or ideas, either literally or through the use of figurative language.
- Visual imagery – imagery that suggests a mental picture
- Auditory imagery – imagery that represents sound
- Olfactory imagery – imagery that represents smell
- Gustatory imagery – imagery that represents taste
- Tactile imagery – imagery that represents touch
- Organic imagery – imagery that represents an internal sensation, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, or nausea
- Kinesthetic imagery – imagery that represents movement or tension in the muscles or joints
- Metaphor – a figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (ex. “the ship plows the seas,” or “a volley of oaths”). A metaphor is an implied comparison (as in a marble brow) in contrast to the explicit comparison of the simile (as in a brow as white as marble).
- Simile – a figure of speech involving a comparison between two unlike entities. In the simile, unlike the metaphor, the resemblance is explicitly indicated by the words “like” or “as.”
- End Rhyme - a rhyme that occurs at the end of a line of poetry.
- Internal Rhyme - a rhyme that occurs within a line of poetry (it must be within only one line).
- Masculine Rhyme - a rhyme that ends with a stressed syllable (still - hill; bore - more).
- Feminine Rhyme - a rhyme that consists of more than one syllable and ends with an unstressed syllable (bending - ending; learning - earning)
- Double Rhyme - a rhyme involving the repetition of two syllables.
- Triple Rhyme - A rhyme invovling the repetition of three syllables (vanity - humanity; beautiful - dutiful)
- Forced Rhyme - a rhyme where a poet changes the pronounciation of a word, or the structure of a sentence, to force a rhyme where one normally does not exist (intellectual - henpecked you all; rhinocerous - prepocerous [when the word really is preposterous]).
- Perfect Rhyme - a rhyme the rhymed sounds are exactly alike.
- Imperfect Rhyme - a rhyme where the syllables are not exact, usually the syllables would rhyme except that the vowels are slightly different (loads - lids - lads; groaned - crooned - ground).
- Eye Rhyme - a rhyme where two words look the same, but are not pronounced the same. Usually, the eye-rhymes are also imperfect rhymes (prove-love), but sometimes they are not (daughter-laughter). Usually eye rhymes were once pronounced the same, but over time they drifted apart.
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