ap english figures of speech test

address to someone or something absent or nonhuman as if it's listening. thinking aloud/ the author is addressing a wasp in \"To a Wasp\" even though the creature literally cannot hear him.

runs through entire work, determines form or nature of work/ \"Chess\" uses the controlling metaphor of chess being a new relationship. the entire poem describes a long game of chess while also describing the intense relationship.

sustained comparison, work has series of related metaphors/\"Metaphors\" uses an extended metaphor to show everything the author is repeatedly like the repeated beginning \"I am..(riddle, elephant, melon)\"

boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without being literally true/ \"It sifts from Leaden Sieves\" repeatedly uses hyperbolas to describe what snow does as it falls. it does not literally \"make an even face\" or \"reaches to the fence\".

hints or alludes comparison, more subtle, less explicit

makes a comparison between two unlike things, without like or as, explicit/ \"Presentiment\" explicitly calls presentiment a long shadow on the lawn. This directly connects the two without like or as to describe the intensity of an abstraction to something physical.

condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together/ in \"The Author to Her Book\" \"blemishes amend\" is an oxymoron because a blemish disrupts things like skin instead of amending it

appears to be contradictory but turns out to make sense/ in \"The Unkindest Cut\" a paper cut is described as more painful than guillotine strike. it seems contradictory at first physically but mentally the verbal abuse stays while the physical abuse ends you instantly and you dont live with it.

human characteristics are given to nonhuman things/ in \"Mirror\" a mirror is the narrator describing things that it does. this is personification because a mirror does not literally \"swallow whatever it sees\" like a human could.

play on words that relies on word's having more than one meaning or sounding like another word/ \"pragmatist\" uses the pun \"halve a nice day\" to mean have a nice day ironically during the end and also that the day is going to destruct in half from the apocalypse.

explicit comparison between two using like or as/ \"you fit into me\" uses \"like a hook into an eye\" to describe the bond between the author and a lover as similar to a fish hook fitting into the fish eye.

part of something is used to signify the whole/ \"The Hand That Signed the Paper\" uses the hand as the main object doing every action, it's a synechdoche because only one part of the body represents the entire ruler/king making decisions

says less than is intended, ironic effect, comic/ \"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning\" uses an understatement when describing the planets moving violently as an innocent action.