Definition-Easy Mode
A scene that takes place before a story begins. It interrupts the chronological order of the main narrative to take a reader back in time to the past events in a character's life.
Flashback
A figure of speech that is an intentional exaggeration for emphasis or comedic effect.
Hyperbole
Euphemism
A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
It was raining cats and dogs.
Metaphor
The Colosseum in Rome.
Anachronism
A rhetorical figure of speech that compares two subjects without the use of “like” or “as.”
Metaphor
The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.
Personification
Metonym
A figure of speech in which something is called by a new name that is related in meaning to the original thing or concept.
The sun smiles down on us.
Personification
A dog walking on two legs.
Anthropomorphism
When the author hints at or indicates events that will occur in the future.
Foreshadowing
A word or phrase that is not formal or literary and is used in ordinary or familiar conversation
Colloquialism
Malapropism
A wrong word used accidentally in place of another word with a similar sound. It can be humorous because they give rise to nonsensical statements.
Sally sold sea shells on the sea shore.
Alliteration
Do you like my new wheels?
Synecdoche
The descriptive language used to appeal to a reader's senses of touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight.
Imagery
Where a non-human object or character behaves the way a human would act or otherwise exhibits characteristics of a human being.
Anthropomorphism
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa.
Hey, whatcha up to?
Colloquialism
“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school as I did.” They replaced bicycles with encyclopedia.
Malapropism
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Alliteration
A thing appropriate to a time other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.
Anachronism
Soliloquy
An act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.
Saying “passed away” instead of “died”.
Euphemism
Juliet speaks her thoughts aloud when she learns that Romeo is the son of her family's enemy: O Romeo, Romeo!
Soliloquy