Miscellaneous
Figurative Language
Syntax Sense
Diction
A Metaphor by Any Other Name
100
Narration, description, exposition, and argumentation.
What are the four modes of discourse?
100
"The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell, struck, turned over, kept droning through the air, and smasshed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest" (Golding 28). This passage provides an excellent example of this type of figurative language.
What is personification?
100
Charles Dickens uses this rhetorical device as he opens his novel A Tale of Two Cities with the juxtaposition of the following contrasting clauses: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
What is antithesis?
100
She wears her holy jeans to church.
What is a pun.
100
The use of the word "Hollywood" as a substitute for "the United States' cinema industry" is an example of this figure of speech.
What is What is metonymy?
200
Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac is comprised of numerous short phrases that capture commonly held beliefs about work, wealth, happiness, and knowledge. The sentences "One today is worth two tomorrow" and "There are no gains without pains" are examples of this type of statement.
What is aphorism?
200
The three contradictory slogans of the Party (War is peace; freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength) in George Orwell's 1984 are all examples of this figure of speech.
What is paradox.
200
"We shall go to the end; we shall fight in Francel we shall fight on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air; we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches; we shal fight on the landing grounds; we shll fight on the fields and in the streets; we shal fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." This passage from Winston Churchill's June 4, 1940 speech employs this repetitive syntactical device.
What is anaphora?
200
Instead of telling him his powerpoint was terrible, Kelsey said that it needed a little tweaking before the group could use it.
What is a euphemism?
200
In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Lady Capulet gives a long speech recommending Paris to Juliet in which she finishes by saying, "The precious book of love, this unbound lover,/ to beautify him only lacks a cover" (1.3.87-88).
What is a conceit?
300
This aspect of a text expresses tone or mood, but is not tone or mood. You can come to understand it through careful attention to the writer's diction.
What is attitude?
300
"The smoke was a tight little knot on the horizon and was uncoiling slowly" (Golding 66). This sentence contains an example of figurative language.
What is a metaphor?
300
"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." This passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson is an example of this syntactical structure.
What is an isocolon?
300
When the narrator states that Ralph's jerking up his stockings is a gesture that "seems for a moment like the Home Counties" (Golding 1), his use of "Home Counties" to refer to the several suburbs that surround London is an example of this type of diction.
What is a colloquialism?
300
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, led me your ears." This quotation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar employs a type of metaphor.
What is synechdoche?
400
"Balanced on a high peak of need, agonized by indecision, Ralp cried out" (Golding 67). THis sentence is an example of a particular kind of sentence.
What is a periodic sentence?
400
"The breezes that on the lagoon had chased their tails like kittens were finding their way across the platform and into the forest (Golding 34). Aside from animating the breezes, this passage also provides another form of figurative language.
What is a simile?
400
The popular saying, "Quitters never win, and winners never quit" is an example of whih syntactical structure?
What is chiasmus?
500
"Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me" (Dickens 304). The speech from Estella to Miss Havisham employs a particular syntactical structure.
What is asyndeton?
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