Shakespeare Figures of Speech – Flashcards
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Alliteration
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The repetition of an initial consonant sound. Pickled Peppers, Amazing Animal
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Anaphora
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The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. We learned that we had no hair, we learned that we are awesome, and we learned that I am stupid.
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Antithesis
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A rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases. Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing.
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Apostrophe
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Addresssing an absent or non-existent person or thing as if they were present and capable of understanding. Blue moon, oyu saw me standing alone.
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Assonance
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The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in neighbouring words. If I bleat when I speak its because I just got fleeced.
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Chiasmus
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A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first by reversing its parts. You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.
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Euphemism
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The substitution of an inoffensive expression to replace on that is considered offensively explicit. Passed away ---> Died. Enhanced interrogation --> Torture
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Hyperbole
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An extravagant statement in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect I could have hung my coat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.
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Irony / Dramatic Irony
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The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. You can't fight in here, it's the War Room! Dramatic Irony is when the audience knows more about the situation than the characters involved.
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Litiotes
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A use of understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. Are you aware, Mrs. Johnson, that your son does not have an exemplary attendance record?
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Metaphor
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A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common. The streets were a furnace; the sun an executioner.
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Metonymy
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Figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closelt associated. Crown --> Royalty Also, the strategy of describing something by indirectly describing the objects around them. A bunch of labcoats made a vaccine.
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Onomatopoeia
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The use of words to imitate the sounds associated with objects. Choo choo train.
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Oxymoron
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Figure of speech in which seemingly contradictory terms appear side by side. O brawling love! O loving hate! O heavy lightness!
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Paradox
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A figure of speech in whcih the statement appears to contradict itself. The swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.
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Personification
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A figure of speech in whcih an inanimate object is given human qualities or abilities. Oreo. Milk's favourite cookie.
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Pun
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A play on words, either on different sense of the same word or the similar sense of the sound of different words. Kings worry about a receding heir line.
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Simile
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A figure of speech in which two things are compared using like or as. I felt i had left all my troubles on the floor beneath me like big concrete shoes.
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Synecdoche
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A figure of speech in which a part is used to identify the whole. All hands on deck!
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Understatement
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A figure of speech in which the writer makes a situation feel less important or serious than it really is. I ahve to get this surgery. It isn't serious. I have this tiny little tumour on my brain.
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Conceit
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An extended metaphor. By juxtaposing and manipulating images in surprising ways, conceit makes the reader derive a more complex understanding of the matter at hand. This refrains from becoming predictable, as a metaphor does.
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Figurative Language
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Whenever you describe something by comparing it to something else, you are using figurative language. Metaphor, simile, personification are all examples.
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Malaprop
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Amusing error that occurs when a person mistakenly uses a word that sounds like another but that has very different meaning. I'm going to dance a flamingo (Flamenco). Present in the speeches of Elbow, in Measure for Measure.
