Examples
Trope
metaphor, simile, analogy, hyperbole, understatement, rhetorical question, antonomasia, irony
Metaphor
"When you have a brand like Coca-cola, and you find a rat head in the bottle, you create an outcry...Republicans who raise taxes are rat heads in Coke bottles. They endanger the brand."
Personification
stormy, husky, brawling, city of the big shoulders
Paradox
This statement is a lie
I must be cruel only to be kind
Nobody goes to Murphy's Bar anymore- it's too crowded
Polysyndeton
I said, "Who killed him?" and he said, "I don't know who killed him but he's dead all right" and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I has her inside Mango Key and she was all right only she was full of water
Imagery
sight imagery- when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table
sound imagery- my stick fingers click with a snicker and, chuckling, they knuckle the keys light-footed, my steel feelers flicker and pluck from these keys melodies
Simile
you can tell the graphic novel section in a bookstore from afar by the young bodies sprawled around it like casualties of localized disater
Allusion
most of the time, the choice between books and television is not between Virgil and Geraldo but between The Celestine Prophecy and Roseanne
Declarative sentence
He walked in confidently
Rhetorical fragment
Hunger. Poverty. Waster. What comes to mind as you read these words? Sympathy? Empathy? Good.
Understatement
Bill Gates might say he knows a little about running a company
a right-wing conservative might say to a left-wing liberal
Analogy
As ]actor] Howard develops DJay's frustration and rue, he avoids the obvious, the over emphatic. His self-mocking performance is so ironically refined and elusive that one might think that Duke Ellington himself had slipped into an old undershirt and hit the fetid streets of Memphis.
Jargon
"We have a crasher here, folks, get some acetaminophen. No, wait, actually, make it Demerol; she just found out her uncle was DOA
Imperative sentence
walk in confidently even if you don't feel confident
Rhetorical question
If you have ever visited one of the Disney theme parks, though, you have likely wondered about the labor- both seen and unseen- necessary to maintain these fanciful environments. How and when are the grounds tended so painstakingly/How are the signs of high traffic erased from public facilities? What keeps employees so poised, meticulously groomed, and endlessly cheerful?
Antonomasia
"His Airness" means Michael Jordan
"The Great One' is Wayne Gretzky
"The Sultan of Swat" refers to Babe Ruth
"The Flying Tomato" is Olympic snow boarder, Shaun White
Hyperbole
I rise to pay my small tribute to Dr.Harding. Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati
Colloquial language or slang
Colloquial language: Let's do lunch; I am going to get back at him. slang. That movie scene was sweet. It was so cool. Brat Pitt was a stlyin dude with the babes
Interrogative sentence
Is he confident
Labyrinthine sentence
To take off in an F100 at dawn and cut in the afterburner and hurtle twenty-five thousand feet up into the sky so sudden;y that you felt not like a bird but like a trajectory, yet with full control, full control of five tons of thrust, all of which flowed from your will and through your fingertips
Irony
Marc Antony says Brutus: "But Brutus is an honorable man"
Apostrophe
busy old fool, unruly sun, why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains call on us
Vernacular
Vernacular often differs from place to place since people in different regions have slightly different ways of speaking
Asyndeton
"...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any doe to assure the survival and the success of liberty"
Antithesis
"It has been my experiences that folks who have no vices have very few virtues- Abraham Lincoln
It can't be wrong if it feels so right"- Debbie Boone