| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Pleonasm | using more words than necessary |
| Tautology | useless repetition |
| Synesthesia | A rhetorical device that mixes elements of the senses |
| Anthimeria | The substitution of one part of speech for another |
| Paronomasia | use of similar sounding words; often etymological word-play. |
| Onomatopoeia | using words that imitate the sound they denote |
| Syllepsis | use of a word to govern two or more words though agreeing in number or case etc. with only one |
| Antanaclasis | Repetition of a word in two different senses |
| Pun | a humorous play on words |
| Oxymoron | conjoining contradictory terms |
| Paradox | apparently contradictory statement |
| Rhetorical Question | a statement that is formulated as a question but that is not supposed to be answered |
| Irony | a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs |
| Litotes | understatement for rhetorical effect (especially when expressing an affirmative by negating its contrary) |
| Meiosis | expressive understatement |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration |
| Apostrophe | a technique by which a writer addresses an inanimate object, an idea, or a person who is either dead or absent. |
| Euphemism | an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive |
| Synecdoche | substituting a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa |
| Metonymy | substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself (as in 'they counted heads') |
| Anthropomorphism | the attribution of humanlike characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, or forces of nature |
| Personification | representing an abstract quality or idea as a person or creature |
| Allegory | an expressive style that uses fictional characters and events to describe some subject by suggestive resemblances |
| Parable | a short moral story |
| Metaphor | a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity |
| Simile | comparison using like or as |
Combine with other sets
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