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Questions and Answers
What literary device involves referring to abstract concepts or objects as if they had human qualities?
What is the term for using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning?
What literary device involves asking a question for a purpose other than obtaining the information requested?
What is the term for a figure of speech that involves an exaggeration used for emphasis?
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What literary device involves the use of words that sound alike but have different meanings?
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What is the literary device used in the phrase '...I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong— /Who, you all know, are honorable men./ I will not do them wrong.'
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What is the term used to describe the arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance?
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What literary device involves the repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words?
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What is the term used to describe the omission of conjunctions between a series of clauses?
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What is the term used to describe the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure?
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Study Notes
Literary Devices
- Metaphor: Referring to one thing as another, implying a comparison or analogy.
- Simile: Making an explicit comparison or analogy of one thing to another.
- Personification: Referring to abstract concepts or objects as if they had human qualities.
- Synecdoche: Representing the whole by one of its parts.
- Metonymy: Referring to something or someone by one of its characteristics.
- Symbol: Using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning.
Wordplay
- Pun: Using words that sound alike but have different meanings.
- Onomatopoeia: Using words whose sound resembles their meaning.
- Syllepsis: Using a word with different meanings in relation to two or more different words that it governs or modifies.
Overstatement/Understatement
- Hyperbole: Using an exaggeration for emphasis, often creating an ironic effect.
- Litotes: Using an understatement, often creating an ironic effect.
Semantic Inversions
- Rhetorical Question: Asking a question for a purpose other than obtaining the information requested.
- Paralipsis: Pretending to hide what one wants to say and emphasizing it instead.
- Oxymoron: Placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to each other, creating a compressed paradox.
- Paradox: An apparently contradictory statement.
Structures of Balance
- Parallelism: Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
- Tricolon (or "rule of three"): Three parallel elements of the same length occurring together.
- Antithesis: Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure.
- Climax: Arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance, often in parallel structure.
Change in Word Order
- Anastrophe: Inversion of natural word order.
- Parenthesis: Insertion of a verbal unit that interrupts normal syntactical flow.
- Apposition: Addition of an adjacent, coordinate, explanatory element.
Omission
- Ellipsis: Omission of a word or words readily implied by context.
- Asyndeton: Omission of conjunctions between a series of clauses.
- Polysyndeton: A superabundance of conjunctions.
Repetition
- Alliteration: Repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words.
- Assonance: Repetition of similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables of adjacent words.
- Polyptoton: Repetition of words derived from the same root.
- Anaphora: Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
- Epiphora (or epistrophe): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive clauses.
- Chiasmus: Repetition of grammatical structures in reverse order in successive phrases or clauses.
- Ploce: Repetition of a word, separated or repeated, functioning as a different part of speech or in different contexts.
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Description
Test your knowledge of literary devices such as metaphor, simile, personification, and more! Identify and understand the different types of literary devices used in literature.
