ALLITERATION
The repetition of an initial consonant sound.
Examples:

"You'll never put a better bit of butter on your knife."
(advertising slogan for Country Life butter)

"A moist young moon hung above the mist of a neighboring meadow."
(Vladimir Nabokov, Conclusive Evidence)
ALLUSION
A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event--real or fictional.
Example:
"I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does."
(Warren Buffett)
ANAPHORA
A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
Examples:

"Sir Walter Raleigh. Good food. Good cheer. Good times."
(slogan of the Sir Walter Raleigh Inn Restaurant, Maryland)

"We saw the bruised children of these fathers clump onto our school bus, we saw the
abandoned children huddle in the pews at church, we saw the stunned and battered mothers
begging for help at our doors."
(Scott Russell Sanders, "Under the Influence," 1989)
ANTITHESIS
A rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases or clauses.
Examples:

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing."
(Goethe)

"Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."
(advertising slogan)
HYPERBOLE
A figure of speech (a form of irony) in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect; an
extravagant statement.
Example:
"My toaster has never once worked properly in four years. I follow the instructions and push two
slices of bread down in the slots, and seconds later they rifle upwards. Once they broke the nose of a
woman I loved dearly."
(Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates." The New York Times, Aug. 10, 1979)
HYPOPHORA
A rhetorical term for the strategy in which a speaker raises a question and then immediately answers
it.
Examples:

"You ask, what is our policy? I will say it is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our
might and all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny,
never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy.
"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs, victory in
spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory, there is
no survival."
(Winston Churchill, 13 May 1940)

"What shall Cordelia speak?
Love, and be silent."
(Cordelia in King Lear by William Shakespeare)
METAPHOR
A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually
have something in common.
Examples:

"Between the lower east side tenements
the sky is a snotty handkerchief."
(Marge Piercy, "The Butt of Winter")

"The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner."
(Cynthia Ozick, "Rosa")
PERSONIFICATION
A trope or figure of speech (generally considered a type of metaphor) in which an inanimate object
or abstraction is given human qualities or abilities.
Example:

“The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and
Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand
And said he'd kill and kill and kill,
And so he will! And so he will!”
(James Stephens, "The Wind")
SIMILE
A figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a
phrase introduced by like or as.
Examples:

"Good coffee is like friendship: rich and warm and strong."
(slogan of Pan-American Coffee Bureau)

"Life is rather like a tin of sardines: we're all of us looking for the key."
(Alan Bennett)
UNDERSTATEMENT
A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or
serious than it is.
Examples:

"This [double helix] structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest."
(J. Watson and F. Crick)

"I have to have this operation. It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain."
(Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye, by J. D. Salinger)