| Term | Definition |
|---|
| simile | He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. -- Raymond Chandler |
| metaphor | Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. -- Austin O'Malley |
| synecdoche | Take thy face hence. -- William Shakespeare |
| metonymy | The IRS is auditing me. That's all I need - a couple of suits arriving at my door. |
| personification | Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. -- Theodore Roethke |
| periphrasis | We spent a whirl-wind weekend in the Big Apple. |
| pun | Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. -- Groucho Marx |
| anthimeria | The thunder would not peace at my bidding. -- William Shakespeare |
| onomatopoeia | Hark! Now I hear them - Ding, dong, bell. -- William Shakespeare |
| hyperbole | At last the garbage reached so high finally it touched the sky -- Shel Silverstein |
| litotes | I am not unfamiliar with the work of Lewis Carroll. |
| irony | After eating every last bite of food on the plate: "Couldn't you have fixed something good?" |
| oxymoron | That building is a little bit big and pretty ugly. -- James Thurber |
| rhetorical question | If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice? -- Billy Corgan |
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