| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | Repetition of the same sound beginning several words in sequence. |
| allusion | Brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art. |
| anaphora | Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines. |
| antimetabole | Repetition of words in reverse order. |
| antithesis | Opposition, or contrast, of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction. |
| archaic diction | Old-fashioned or outdated choice of words. |
| asyndeton | Omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words. |
| cumulative sentence | Sentence that completes the main idea at the beginning of the sentence, and then builds and adds on. |
| hortative sentence | Sentence that exhorts, advises, calls to action. |
| imperative sentence | Sentence used to command, enjoin, implore, or entreat. |
| inversion | Inverted order of words in a sentence (variation of the subject-verb-object order). |
| juxtaposition | Placement of two things closely together to emphasize comparisons or contrasts. |
| metaphor | Figure of speech that says one thing is another in order to explain by comparison. |
| metonymy | Using a single feature to represent the whole. |
| oxymoron | Paradoxical juxtaposition of words that seem to contradict one another. |
| parallelism | Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. |
| periodic sentence | Sentence whose main clause is withheld until the end. |
| personification | Attribution of a lifelike quality to an inanimate object or idea. |
| rhetorical question | Figure of speech in the form of a question posed for rhetorical effect rather than for the purpose of getting an answer. |
| zeugma | Use of two different words in a grammatically similar way but producing different, often incongruous, meanings. |
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