Figurative Language #1
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Metaphor
“Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me.”
Personification
“I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills.”
Simile
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Parallelism
“With the Lord a thousand years are but a day.”
Hyperbole
“The air was thick with the smell of blood and roast meat.”
Olfactory Imagery
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
Metonymy
“The setting sun was licking the hard bright city with its golden tongue.”
Visual Imagery
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up... I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia… I have a dream today.”
“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes.”
Alliteration
“Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.”
Simile
“The bed linens might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.”
Tactile Imagery
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”
Antithesis
“Friends, Romans, countrymen…”
Asyndeton
“Tis but a scratch.”
– The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(After losing an arm in battle, the character dramatically understates the severity of his injury.)
Understatement
“At the next table a woman stuck her head into the light and beamed at her companion, rattling on like a cheerful typewriter.”
Auditory Imagery
“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight.”
Visual Imagery
“We could hear their hard breathing as they plowed and struck, their limbs stiffening, their bodies covered with sweat.”
Kinesthetic Imagery
“And God made the beasts of the earth, and cattle, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.”
Apostrophe
“I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all.”
Allusion
“I felt as if I was drowning in a sea of despair.”
Organic Imagery
“I have seen this river so wide it had only one bank.”
Hyperbole
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
Chiasmus
“The king is dead, long live the king.”
Epanadiplosis