Examples
metaphor, simile, analogy, hyperbole, understatement, rhetorical question, antonomasia, irony
Trope
He's a couch potato.
Metaphor
The sun kissed me while I was clicking a picture.
Personification
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Paradox
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
Polysyndeton
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
Imagery
Her phone buzzed like a beehive.
Simile
Most of the time, the choice between books and television is not between Virgil and Geraldo but between The Celestine Prophecy and Roseanne
Allusion
This type of sentence: He walked in confidently.
Declarative sentence
Hunger. Poverty. Waster. What comes to mind as you read these words? Sympathy? Empathy? Good.
Rhetorical fragment
Bill Gates might say he knows a little about running a company
Understatement
As ]actor] Howard develops DJay's frustration and rue, he avoids the obvious, the over-emphasis. 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.
Analogy
I need a script in order to pick up the medicine.
Jargon
Leave the book under my doormat.
Imperative sentence
If we know what we're looking for, why is it so difficult to find?
Rhetorical question
"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
Antonomasia
That plane ride took forever
That movie scene was sweet. It was so cool.
Colloquial language or slang
Where is the library?
Interrogative 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 suddenly that you feel not like a bird but like a trajectory, yet with full control, full control of five tons of thrust, all of which flow from your will and through your fingertips-- is incredible.
Labyrinthine sentence
The Titanic was touted as an “unsinkable” ship, yet it sank on its first voyage.
Irony
busy old fool, unruly sun, why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains call on us
Apostrophe
“Yo, Tibby,” she heard a familiar voice call as she turned into the parking lot.
Vernacular
"...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."
Asyndeton
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues
Antithesis