Common Figures of Speech with examples

Common Figures of Speech in English Literature

👉 What is Figure of Speech?

Answer: Rhetoric or a Figure of Speech is the ornament of language for intensifying the aesthetic appeal or the impressiveness of the poetic idea. By the use of Figures of Speech the writers de-familiarize the familiarize, make the common history into eternal mystery.

👉 What is a Grammar?

Answer: The Grammar is a language refers to the set principles or rules that enable a man to speak and write correctly. It is the foundation of a language.

👉 What is the difference between Grammar and Figures of Speech?

Answer: If the Grammar with its set-rules and regulation aims at correction, the Figures of Speech add to the impressiveness of the idea. In other words, if Grammar is the foundation consolidating the knowledge of the language, The Figures serve as the superstructure sufficiently beautifying the thought or idea.

However, there are many types of figures of speech beautifying the thought of writer’s knowledge. But here we’ll discuss some common Figures of Speech for exam purpose in different educational institutions.

Let’s discuss with examples each…

1) Simile

Simile is a stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.

Examples: (a) She is like a rose.

(b) His heart is like a stone

(d) All the world is like a stage.

(e)Life is as tedious as a twice told tale.

(f) Variety is like the spice of life.

(g) Childhood is like a sowing ground.

(h) The youthful hue/Sits on thy skin like a morning star.

2) Metaphor

Metaphor is an implied comparison between two unlike things that truly have something important in common.

Examples: (a) She is a rose. Evil thought is the robber of mental peace.

(b) A good politician is the pillar of the state.

(d) So many roses have blossomed in the garden of your youth.

(e) An ideal lover becomes the polestar.

(f) Life is a tale told by an idiot.

(g) The wish is the father of thought.

(h) He is now the twilight of his life.

(i) Her heart is dried up by scorching rays of loveless-ness.

3) Personification

A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.

Examples: (a) Death lays its icy hands even on kings.

(b) Poverty has chocked his dream.

(d) But at my back I always hear/ Time winged chariot hurrying near.

4) Pun

Pun is a play on words, sometimes on different senses of a similar word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of various words.

Examples: (a) If a man’s wife dies, he pines for ‘a second’.

(b) If a leopard changes its ‘spot’, the ‘spots’ on its body are changed.

5) Hyperbole

Hyperbole is an extravagant statement; the utilization of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.

Examples: (a) My love is a rose, a red rose newly sprung in June.

(b) And hundred years should go to praise/ Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze

6) Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound.

Examples: (a) An Austrian army awfully arrayed.

(b) faithful friend from flattering foe.

7) Anaphora

Anaphora is the repetition of a similar word or phrase or sentences at the outset of successive clauses or verses. (Contrast with epiphora and epistrophe.)

Examples: (a) “Every day, every night, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

(b) My life is my purpose, my life is my goal, and my life is my inspiration.”

8) Antithesis

Antithesis is the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.

Examples: (a) “ To err is human; to forgive is divine.”

(b) “Love is an ideal thing; marriage is a real thing.”

9) Chiasmus

A verbal pattern within which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.

Examples: (a) “Never let a Fool kiss you or Kiss fool you.”

(b) “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”

10) Euphemism

Euphemism is a figure of speech in which a harsh statement is made in an indirect way to make it pleasant for the purpose softening down something harsh.

Examples: (a) He breathed his last. (Died)

(b) The bank has stopped payment. (Bankrupt)

11) Irony

The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the concept.

Examples:(a) A pilot has a fear of heights.

(b) A fire station burns down.

12) Litotes

A figure of speech consisting of an irony in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.

Examples: (a) He’s not the friendliest person. (Enemy)

(b) She’s not unkind. (kind)

13) Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for an additional with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.

Examples: (a) “The pen is mightier than the sword.” (‘Pen’ refers to written words and ‘sword’ refers to military force.)

(b) “Let me give you a hand.” ( here ‘hand’, means ‘help’)

14) Onomatopoeia

The use of words that imitate the sounds related to the objects or actions they refer to.

Examples: (a) Machine noises – honk, beep, vroom, clang, zap, boing.

(b) Animal names –cuckoo, whip-poor-will, whooping crane, chickadee.

(d) sounds of voice – shush, giggle, growl, whine, murmur, blurt, whisper, hiss

15) Oxymoron

Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.

Examples- (a) open secret (b) tragic comedy (c) Seriously funny (d) Awfully pretty (e) foolish wisdom (f) Original copies (g) Liquid gas

16) Paradox

Paradox is a statement that appears to contradict itself

Examples: (a) “Your enemy’s friend is your enemy.”

(b) “Truth is honey, which is bitter.”

17) Synecdoche

Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the entire (for example, ABCs for alphabet) or the entire for a part ("England won the world Cup in 1966").

18) Understatement

A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less significant or serious than it is.

Examples: (a) You scrap the entire body of your car, (the understatement would be: “it is only a small scratch.”)

(b) A person flips out in anger over a hockey game on television and breaks their TV. (The understatement would be: “I’ve a little bit of temper.”)

19) Apostrophe

Apostrophe is a literary tradition breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.

Examples: (a) “Death be not proud, thou some have called thee/ Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.”

(b) Blue moon, you saw me standing alone/ Without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own.”

20) Assonance

Assonance is a figure of speech in which two or more words, close to one another repeat the same vowel sound, but start with different consonant sounds.

Examples: (a) “Men sell the wedding bells.”

(b) We light fire on the mountain.

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