"Let it be our cause to give that child a happy home, a healthy family, and a hopeful future." (Bill Clinton, 1992 DNC Acceptance Address) ... repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words.
What is Alliteration?
100
“The night is bleeding like a cut.” (Bono) ... explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature, usually using “like” or “as”.
What is Simile?
100
"Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island." (Franklin Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor Address) ... repetition of the same word or groups of words at the beginnings of successive phrases.
What is Anaphora?
100
“So Janey waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.”—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God ... similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
What is Parallelism?
100
Look! A squirrel! ... This fallacy introduces an irrelevant issue into a discussion as a diversionary tactic.
What is Red Herring?
200
"The luxury train, The Orient Express, crosses Europe..." A word or phrase that follows a noun or a pronoun for emphasis or clarity.
What is Appositive?
200
"The pen is mightier than the sword." ... substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is actually meant.
What is Metonymy?
200
"They call for you: The general who became a slave; the slave who became a gladiator; the gladiator who defied an Emperor." ... repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause.
What is Anadiplosis?
200
“What if I am rich, and another is poor—strong, and he is weak—intelligent, and he is benighted—elevated, and he is depraved? Have we not one Father? Hath not one God created us?”—William Lloyd Garrison, “No Compromise with Slavery” ... the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure.
What is Antithesis?
200
A never-ending circle ... A conclusion is assumed, then used to prove itself.
What is Begging the Question?
300
"We lived and laughed and loved and left." (James Joyce, Finnegans Wake)
What is Polysyndeton?
300
“It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.” (Catcher in the Rye) ... deliberate use of understatement.
What is Litotes?
300
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” (John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address) ... repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order.
What is Antimetabole?
300
A sentence that presents its central meaning in a main clause at the end. “Ecstatic with my AP score, I let out a loud, joyful shout!”
What is Periodic Sentence?
300
The cat purred, therefore, because of that, it coughed up a hairball. This fallacy assumes that just because one event follows another in time, that it was caused by that event.
What is Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc?
400
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people." ... omission of a conjunction before the last item in a series.
What is Asyndeton?
400
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” (Winston Churchill, 1940) ... figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole.
What is Synecdoche?
400
"...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address) ... repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive phrases.
What is Epistrophe?
400
"All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal."
What is Syllogism?
400
Hey! I don't follow! When one statement isn't logically connected to another ... the premises have no direct relationship to the conclusion.
What is Non-Sequitar?
500
“"There they stood together, the beggars and the lords, the princesses and the washerwoman, all crowding into the square.”
What is Juxtaposition?
500
“And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound.” (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man) ... an apparently contradictory statement that nevertheless contains a measure of truth.
What is Paradox?
500
"When I went to buy my morning coffee, I ran into an old friend. He told me he had won the lottery and he was about to buy a yacht. Two months later I heard he had declared bankruptcy."...offering a brief narrative episode.
What is Anecdote?
500
"What is learned unwillingly is gladly forgotten." ... criss-cross ... a form of antithesis in which the second half of the statement inverts the grammatical elements of the first half.
What is Chiasmus?
500
Against the Man! A form of name-calling where a person is discredited personally in an attempt to lessen the power of his/her argument.