Figures of speech are short, vivid comparisons, not meant to be taken literally. If someone says, "Figures of speech offer ways to spice up your writing and make your essays more palatable," that person is using a figure of speech since most of people don't eat essays or turn in dinners to English Instructors. The following list is not inclusive, but it provides students with an overview of several important figures of speech:

Alliteration: the repetition within a line or phrase of the same initial consonant sound. (ex: "Death, thou Shalt die.")

Allusion: a comparison of someone or something to a famoug character or event in literature or history. (ex: In the rooms, the women come and go, And talk of Barry Manilow.")

Analogy: where one tries to explain all parts of the comparison.

Archetype: themes, images, and narrative patterns that are universal and thus embody some enduring aspects of the human experiente.

Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds in a line, stanza, or sentence. (ex: "His lesions are legion.")

Cacophony: harsh and discordant language (ex: "Is perjured. murderous, bloody . . .")

Free verse: poetry, usually unrhymed, that does not adhere to regular metric verse.

Hyperbole: exaggeration; overstatement (ex: " . . . on freeways fifty lanes wide.")

Imagery: poet's language that creates a recognizable world by drawing on our common experiences. Images are always charged with meanings! (ex: "golden sunset")

Irony: language in which the intended meaning is different from or opposite to the literal meaning. (ex: "And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry.")

Metaphor: suggests a camparison by wording a sentence as if two unlike things are the same. The comparison is never directly stated. (ex: "California Is the bleach-blonde you want to have an affair with; Minnesota Is the girl you marry.")

Metonymy: a word stands for a closely related idea. (ex: "The pen is mightier than the sword;" pen and sword are metonyms for written ideas and physical force respectively.)

Onomatopoeia: language that sounds like what it means (ex: buzz, bark, and hiss.)

Paradox: a statement that seems contradictory, but actually it contains truth. (ex: "Wouldn't it be fine to be lonely together?")

Personification: language that attributes human qualities to things, animals, or nature. (ex: "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so")

Satire: writing in a comic tone that holds a subject up to scorn and ridicule, often with the purpose of correcting human vice and folly. (ex: "Departmental" by Robert Frost, 502)

Simile: a comparison is directly stated. A simile is easier to understand than a metaphor because it is stated directly; however, since the metaphor takes the greater leap, its force is more powerful. (ex: "Love is like a fire--it burns you when it's hot.")

Sonnet: a lyric poem of fourteen lines, usually of iambic pentameter. Two types: Petrarchan (Italian) and Shakespeare (English). The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave rhymed abba/abba and a sestet rhymed cdc/cdc. It often takes the form of an argument and response. The Shakespearean consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. It often takes the form of three variations on a theme or idea with a conclusion in the couplet.

Synecdoche: a part of something used to represent the whole (ex: "A hundred tired feet hit the dance floor for one last jitterbug.")

Understatement: intentional representation of a subject as less important that the facts would warrant