English - Rhetorical Devices Flashcards
Tricolon
A series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses. Simple structure, yet potentially powerful.
EX: “Our freedoms, enduring through civil turmoil, hardship and war”
Antithesis
A rhetorical term for the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases or clauses.
EX: “Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.”
Parallelism/Isocolon
The similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
EX: “Buy a bucket of chicken and have a barrel of fun.”
Alliteration
A repeating of consonant sounds in a string of words; i.e multiple words in a phrase or sentence start with the same letter.
EX: The bad boy broke his brother’s blocks
Anaphora
A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive.
EX: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
Metaphor
A trope or figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common.
EX:
“The neurotic circles ceaselessly above a fogged-in airport.”
Anastrophe/Hyperbaton
Usage of disruption or inversion of customary word order to produce a distinctive effect; usually the noun and the adjective; also, a figure in which language takes a sudden turn, usually an interruption.
EX: “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man.”
Conduplicatio
Conduplicatio is a rhetorical term for the repetition of one or more words in successive clauses.
EX: "Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago. Where have all the flowers gone? Girls have picked them every one. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"
Asyndeton
A writing style that omits conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses.
EX: “He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac.”
Sententia
A brief expression of conventional wisdom.
EX: “A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.”
Polysyndeton
Polysyndeton is a rhetorical term for a sentence style that employs many coordinating conjunctions (most commonly, and).
EX: “They lived and laughed and loved and left.”
Climax
Mounting by degrees through words or sentences of increasing weight and in parallel construction with an emphasis on the high point or culmination of an experience or series of events.
EX: “Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.”
Chiasmus
A verbal pattern (a type of antithesis) in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first with the parts reversed.
EX: “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
Allusion
A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event.
EX: “I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does.”
Hyperbole
A figure of speech (a form of irony) in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect.
EX: “I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.”
