| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Amplification | A restatement with additional detail of words or expressions likely to be ignored or overlooked because of their bluntness or brevity, is use of bare expressions, likely to be ignored or misunderstood by a hearer or reader because of the bluntness. Emphasis through restatement with additional details. |
| Analogy | Drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect |
| Anaphora | repetition of a word or phrase as the beginning of successive clauses |
| antithesis | a clear, contrasting relationship btween two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure |
| cacophony | loud confusing disagreeable sounds |
| chiasmus | An arrangement of repeated thoughts in the pattern of X Y Y X. It is often short and summarizes a main idea. |
| colloquial | characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation |
| euphemism | an inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive |
| irony | incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs |
| juxtaposition | placing two elements side by side to present a comparison or contrast |
| oxymoron | two contradictory words in one expression |
| paradox | an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it. |
| parallelism | recurrent syntactical similarity |
| pedantic | excessively concerned with book learning and formal rules |
| rhetorical question | a statement that is formulated as a question but that is not supposed to be answered |
| Sentence Type | Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative, and Exclamatory |
| syllepsis | use of a word to govern two or more words though agreeing in number or case etc. with only one |
| understatement | a statement that is restrained in ironic contrast to what might have been said |
| allegory | a visible symbol representing an abstract idea |
| alliteration | use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse |
| apostrophe | address to an absent or imaginary person |
| assonance | the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words |
| conceit | a fanciful poetic image or metaphor that likens one thing to something else that is seemingly very different |
| consonance | the repetition of consonants (or consonant patterns) especially at the ends of words |
| couplet | a stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse |
| connotation | suggested or implied meaning of an expression; V. connote |
| denotation | the most direct or specific meaning of a word or expression |
| diction | A writer's or speaker's choice of words |
| hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, make a point, or evoke humor |
| litotes | a figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite. |
| 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 |
| metonymy | substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself (as in 'they counted heads') |
| onomatopoeia | using words that imitate the sound they denote |
| personification | the act of attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas etc. |
| satire | a literary work that ridicules or criticizes a human vice through humor or derision |
| synecdoche | substituting a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa |
| syntax | the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences |
| tone | the attitude a writer takes toward a subject or character |
Combine with other sets
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