Figures of speech list: Definition, Examples

Figures of speech list

Figures based on Imagination

A. Personification:

Personification is a figure of speech that represents the ideas or animals as if humans. They also act like human beings. 

Example:  

“Time and tide wait for none.” 

“The Leaves waved in the wind”

B. Pathetic Fallacy:

Pathetic Fallacy is a figure of speech in which the author gives human emotions and traits to nature. It is often to show the characters’ mood when the author describes the weather. It is also used to create tone and add atmosphere in every writing. 

Example:

“The river wept for the sorrow of the lady”

C. Vision: 

Vision is a figure of speech that help us to see what is not actually seen. 

example:

“Even now, me thinks as pondering home I stand.”

d. Hyperbole:

It is a figure of speech which is used exaggeration to show emphasis. It can make the story more interesting. We in see the use of hyperbole in literature and everyday speech.

Example:

He is morning faster than the wind. 

The man is as fall as a house.

Figures of speech list

Figures based on Association

 A. Metonymy:

Metonymy is a form of figures of speech based on association. It is a figure of speech in which one thing is replaced with the name of something that is closely associated with it. 

Example: 

“The pen is mightier  than the sword.

B. Synecdoche: 

Synecdoche is a figure of speech that can represent the whole part or it can represent a part of using the whole. It can draw attention to the main post. 

Example: 

“She is a woman do eighty winters.

C. Hypallage:

Hypallage is a figure of speech based on association. It is a literary term that is based on the reversal of synthetic relation of two words. It can modify the synthetic relation of the two item. 

Example: 

“He passed a restless night”

D. Allusion:

Allusion is a figure of speech that can refers to a famous person place or any historical event. It is often used within a metaphor on simile. It doesn’t give much detail about the reference. 

Example:

“Your backyard is a Garden of Eden.”

“You are a regular Einestein.

Figures of speech list: Figure based on construction in Rhetoric and Prosody

Figures based on Construction: 

There are 8 types of figures on Construction. They are 

a. Hyperbaton 

b. Chiasmus 

c. Antimetabole 

d. Asyndeton 

e. polysyndeton 

f. Anaphora 

g. Epistrophe 

h. palilogy 

A. Hyperbaton

A hyperbaton is a figure of speech based on Construction. It is usually used for a rearrange of an informal sentence when both grammar and the words do not follow the rules. They break the rules. A hyperbaton is used everywhere not only in conversation, movies but also in poems or drama.

1. Sweet, she was 

2. Even so lost and confused, I felt just then!

B. Chiasmus : 

Chiasmus is a figure of speech in which two key of ideas of a sentence flipped up in the second sentence and the grammatical structure will be reversed in to make a great effort. In rhetoric, it will invent the two Phrases. The original phrase reapperin in the second phrase and invent the order. Both the Phrase will carry the same meaning. 

Examples:

“We forget what we want to remember and we remember what we want to forget.”

He lives to work, he doesn’t work to live. 

C. Antimetabole: 

Antimetabole is as some as chiasmus. It is a figure of speech in which half of a sentence will repeated in the second half of the sentence.

Example:

” Eat to live not live to Eat”.

“I go where I please and I please where I go

D. Asyndeton:  

Asyndeton is a figure of speech in which we can’t uses the conjunctions like ‘and’ ‘or’ ‘but’ ‘for’. We can’t use in any words. Phrases on clauses.

Example: 

Fade for away, dissolve, and quite forgot. 

The weariness, the fever, and the fret. 

E. polysyndeton:

polysyndeton is a figure of speech in which we can use the conjunction like ‘and’ or, but, for we can use it in any sentences, phrases and causes. It is opposite of conjunction.

For example:

where youth grows pale, and spectre then and dies.

F. Anaphora:

Anaphora is a figure of speech in which words will repeat at the beginning of sentence. A particular word orphanage will used repeatedly at the beginning of a sentence. It is mostly used for the rhetorical or poetic effect. 

Example:

where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray 

                                                              hairs,

where youth grows pale, and spectre-than, 

                                                                 anddies;

where but to think is to be full of sorrow

                                                          ‘ode to Nightingale’

                                                                      ‘John Keats’

G. Epiphora / Epistrophe:

Epiphone is opposite of anaphora. It is la figure of speech in which words will repeat of the end of a sentence. A particular phrase or words will be used at the end of a sentence. 

Example: 

Face the down from the dawn,

                                 own the dawn.

H. Palilogy: 

Palilogy is used when a word or Phrase will be repeated for the sake of emphasis.

Example: 

Happy, happy bough that cannot shed. 

Twinkle Twinkle little star.

One more big example so that you can learn what is a figure of speech

Representative death and the figure of speech in the poem Emily Dickinson

1. Emily Dickinson represent death in every poem. Because I could not stop for Death in this poem she also talked about death and importality. 

In the first stanza she said like this 

Because I could not stop for Death

He kindly stopped for me 

Here the poet treated death as a kind and gentleman who is waiting for the poet. Emily Dickinson was a very famous poet. She could not stop for death cause he was very busy in her writing and wanted to become immortal. But death stopped for her as a good and kind-hearted person. The poet personifies death to a human character. Death which will make him immortal is waiting for him inpatient as a gentleman.

2. Emily Dickinson used some figures of speech in “Because I could not stop for Death”

They are:-

A. Personification:

• Death – Emily Dickinson personified death as a human character.

B. Anaphora: 

• We passed the fields of Gazing Grain.
• We passed the setting sun.

C. Imagery:

• Gazing Grain 
• Carriage  
• setting Sun 
• children
• school
• Swelling of the Ground 
• Horses’ heads

4.  Symbolism:

• Setting sun represent Death
• Gazing Grain represent New life  
• Swelling of the Ground represent grave.

E. Alliteration:

• My labor and my leisure
• Gazing Grain
• Setting Sun 
• Horse’s Heads 
• Gossamer, Gown  
• Recess, Ring 
• Tippet, Tulle