Figurative Language
Vocabulary List 1
Alliteration
The repetition of initial sounds
in successive or closely
associated words
Alliteration
• Apt alliteration’s artful aid is often an
occasional element in prose.
• “The fair breeze blew, the white foam
flew, the furrow followed free.” –
Coleridge
• “The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
and murmuring of innumerable bees.”
– Tennyson
Conceit
An outlandish comparison/metaphor
(brief metaphor or entire poem)
• Petrarchan: Subject is compared
extensively/elaborately to an object
• Metaphysical: Complex, startling,
highly intellectual
Conceit
• Robert Burns compares his love to a rose
• Shakespeare compares someone to a
summer’s day
• Donne compares his relationship to a
woman with the woman’s relationship to a
flea
• Donne compares his relationship with a
woman to a compass
Extended metaphor
A metaphor that runs
throughout a poem
Extended Metaphor
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.
Figurative language
Writing that embodies one or
more figures of speech
Figures of speech
Intentional departure from the
normal meaning of words in
order to achieve a certain
effect
Imagery
Sensory language
Imagery
• “Unloved, that beech will gather
brown/ and many a rose carnation
feed/ with summer spice the
humming air.” – Tennyson
• “A sea the purple of the peacock’s
neck is/paled to greenish azure.” –
Moore
A note on writing about
imagery
• Never just say, “The writer uses
imagery.” Describe the imagery biblical, nautical, seasonal, animal, visual,
etc.
• For example, “In the poem “Living in Sin,”
Adrienne Rich uses domestic imagery…”
• If you say, “The author uses imagery to
paint a picture in the reader’s mind,” I
will stuff you and sell you on Ebay.
Metaphor
The comparison of one thing to
another without the use of
like or as
Metaphor
“Hope is the thing with feathers/ that
perches in the soul.” – Dickinson
• “It is the east and Juliet is the sun.”
– Shakespeare
• It’s raining cats and dogs
• That’s my old flame
Metonymy
One word or phrase being
substituted for another
closely related object
Metonymy
Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
• Wordsworth uses an alter to stand for religion, a
sword to
stand for the military, and a pen to stand for
literature
Onomatopoeia
The use of words whose
pronunciation suggests its
meaning
Onomatopoeia
•
•
•
•
Bang
Hiss
Crash
Buzz
Personification
Giving human qualities to nonhuman things
• Anthropomorphism –
specifically referring to
giving animals human qualities
Personification
• “Poetic justice with her lifted scale”
– Pope
• “Full many a glorious morning I have
seen/flatter the mountain-tops with
sovereign eyes/kissing with golden
face the meadows green.”
- Shakespeare
Simile
A direct comparison of two
things using like or as
Simile
• “My love is like a red, red rose”
– Burns
• “A poem should be palpable and mute
as a globed fruit.” – MacLeish
Symbolism
Using something to signify or
represent something else
Symbolism
• Lion – bravery
• Circle – everlasting
• Water – rebirth
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a
part is used for the whole or
the whole for a part
Synecdoche
• “With all its muddy feet that press
the coffee stands” - Eliot
• Gray beard – old man
• Wheels – a car
• Threads - clothing
Synesthesia
Describing one sense in terms
of another
Synesthesia
• “Tasting of flora and the country
green” – Keats
• “With blue uncertain stumbling buzz”
- Dickinson