Get our your Chains Figurative
Language Notes if you still have
them. If not, you will write all of
these notes. Everyone will need to
add some items.
Term: Onomatopoeia
Definition: When a word’s pronunciation imitates its sound.
Examples: Buzz
Fizz
Woof
Hiss
Clink
Boom
“Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas
I'm so 3008
You so 2000 and late
I got that boom, boom, boom
That future boom, boom, boom
Let me get it now
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, gotta get-get
Boom boom boom, now
Boom boom boom, now
Boom boom pow
Boom boom pow
I'm on the supersonic boom
Y'all hear the spaceship zoom
When, when I step inside the room
Beep
Term: Repetition
Definition: Repeating a word or words for effect.
Examples:
Nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
“Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me
Yeah, keep on shinin' your light
Gonna make everything, pretty mama
Gonna make everything all right
And I ain't got no worries
'Cause I ain't in no hurry at all
Term: Rhythm
Definition: When words are arranged in such a way that they make a
pattern or beat.
Examples:
There once was a girl from Chicago
I’m making a pizza the size of the sun.
“’Twas the Night Before Christmas”
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Term: Rhyme
Definition: When words have the same end sound.
Example: Where Fair Air Bear Glare
Term: Internal Rhyme
Definition: a rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and
another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.
Example: “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and
weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a
tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more.'
Term: Literal Language Meaning
Term: End Rhyme
Definition: rhyme of the terminal (last) syllables of lines of poetry
Example: “Vincent” Tim Burton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o&safety_mode=true&
persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active
Term: Rhyme Scheme
Definition: the ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a
poem or verse. Starting with the letter A and continuing through the
alphabet, each end sound is assigned a new letter.
Example:
Amazing Grace! How sweet that sound (a)
I once was lost as I could be (b)
I was blind, but now I see (b)
My life has gone from lost to found (a)
Term: Alitteration
Definition: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the
beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Example:
Peter Piper picked a pickled pepper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U97lbv0_A2I
Term: Consonance
Definition: When consonant sounds repeat in the middle or end of
words.
Vowels: a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.
Consonants: all other letters.
Examples:
Mammals named Tim are clammy.
I believe it would behoove Steve to leave.
Term: Assonance
Definition: When vowel sounds repeat in a line of poetry
Example:
Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
Practice Quiz
I’ll put some lines of poetry on the board.
Write down which techniques are used:
Alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme,
and onomatopoeia.
Some poems use more than one technique.
1. The cuckoo in our cuckoo clock
was wedded to an octopus.
She laid a single wooden egg
and hatched a cuckoocloctopus.
Alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme,
and onomatopoeia.
2. They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
Alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme,
and onomatopoeia.
3. very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the
avenues of the dead.
Alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme,
and onomatopoeia.
4.The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
Alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme,
and onomatopoeia.
5.Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you
away in the sink.
Alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme,
and onomatopoeia.
Term: Literal Language Meaning
Definition: the meaning of words in their usual sense without metaphor
Example: I’m freezing to death (literally.)
Term: Figurative Language Meaning
Definition: the meaning of words and phrases that have exaggerated or
altered the usual meanings of the component words
Example: I’m freezing to death (figuratively).
Term: Connotative Meaning
Definition: a commonly understood cultural of emotional association
that a word of phrase carries
Example: Snake (Greedy, Evil, Vicious)
Term: Analogy
Definition: an extended comparison using multiple examples and
situations
It feels like we've been out at sea, oh,
So back and forth that's how it seems,
And when I wanna talk you say to me
That if it's meant to be it will be.
Whoa-oh-oh
So crazy is this thing we call love,
And now that we've got it, we just can't give up
I'm reaching out for you,
Get me out here in the water and I...
I'm overboard
And I need your love to pull me up
I can't swim on my own
It's too much
Feels like I'm drowning without your love,
So throw yourself out to me, my lifesaver.
Life saver, oh life saver
My life saver
Life saver, oh life saver
Whoa.
“Overboard” by Justin Bieber
Term: Simile
Definition: A comparison of two seemingly unlike things with like, as,
or than; used to make a description more vivid
Examples:
Her eyes were like fireflies.
The cast on Michael’s broken leg was like a plaster shackle.
“The truth comes out a little at a time
And it spreads just like a fire
Slips off of your tongue
like turpentine.”
from “White Liar” by Miranda Lambert
Term: Metaphor
Definition: a figure of speech that uses one thing to mean another
and makes a direct comparison between the two.
Examples:
She hung her head: a dying flower.
Arguing with her was dueling with hand grenades.
“You are the thunder and I am the lightning.”
from “Naturally” by Selena Gomez
Term: Hyperbole
Definition: a highly exaggerated figure of speech (to wait forever
and a day)
Examples:
Old Mr. Johnson has been teaching here since the Stone Age.
Frank can knock a baseball off the continent.
“When you come around, I get paralyzed.”
“If I ever did that, I think I’d have a heart attack.”
-- from “Heart Attack” by Demi Lovato
Term: Personification
Definition: giving human abilities or traits to non-human things
Examples:
The moon turned over to face the day.
One unhappy icicle wasted away in the day.
“You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes.”
from “Thriller” by Michael Jackson
Term: Idiom
Definition: an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative
meaning and/or connotative meaning that cannot be determined
from the actual phrase or words
“Now it's happened once or twice
Someone couldn't pay the price
And I'm afraid I had to rake 'em 'cross the coals.”
“Flotsam, Jetsam, now I’ve got her, boys. The boss is on a roll!”
-- “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid
Term: Dialect
Definition: the language of a particular district, social class, or group
of persons; used in literature as a tool of revealing character, class, or
district.
“Baby, you a song
You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise
Down a back road blowin’ stop signs through the middle
Every little farm town with you.”
“I got my window down”
--from “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line feat. Nelly
Term: Imagery
Definition: language that appeals to sight, smell, taste, sound, or touch
“I am the one hiding under your bed
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red
…..
I am the one hiding under yours stairs
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair.”
-- “ This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas
Term: Symbolism
Definition: frequent use of words, places, colors, characters, or objects
that mean something beyond what they are on a literal level; a
working/physical metaphor
Term: Allusion
Definition: an implied or direct reference to something well-known in
literature or history
“One day you here, one day you there, one day you care
You're so unfair sipping from the cup
till it runneth over, Holy Grail.”
--from “Holy Grail” by Jay Z feat. Justin Timberlake
Understatement
Expressing an idea with significantly less
force than is expected or would be
required to accurately describe an idea
Examples
Let’s just say that Bill Gates has got a few
nickles to rub together.
Learning to juggle flaming chainsaws might
be a little tricky at first.
The middle of the street isn’t the best place
for your child to play.
Practice Quiz
1. Justice is blind and, at times, deaf.
2. The typical teenage boy’s room is a
disaster area.
3. Alan’s jokes were like flat soda to the
children, surprisingly unpleasant.
4. The cactus saluted any visitor brave
enough to travel the scorched land.
5. The job fair was a circus and John was a
dancing bear.
Hyperbole, personification, understatement,
simile, metaphor
Practice Quiz
6. "I have to have this operation. It isn't very
serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the
brain.“
7. The business world would chew you up
and spit you out.
8. I have told you a million times not to lie!
9. Her hair was as soft as a spider web.
10. That joke is so old, the last time I heard
it I was riding on a dinosaur.
Hyperbole, personification, understatement,
simile, metaphor