The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.
What is irony?
100
A stated comparison (usually with "like" or "as") between two dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
What is simile?
100
A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
What is personification?
100
Play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word, sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
What is pun?
200
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.
What is chiasmus?
200
Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
What is an anaphora?
200
A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.
What is oxymoron?
200
The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
What is onomatopoeia?
200
An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
What is a metaphor?
300
Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
What is assonance?
300
A statement that appears to contradict itself.
What is paradox?
300
An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect
What is a hyperbole?
300
Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, inanimate object, or nonexistent character.
What is an apostrophe?
300
The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
What is euphemism?
400
A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
What is litotes?
400
A figure of speech in which a writer/speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
What is an understatement?
400
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.
What is metonymy?
500
The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
What is antithesis?
500
A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.