Literary Devices Flashcards
He drowned in a sea of grief.
Metaphor
She is fishing in troubled waters.
Metaphor
Success is a bastard as it has many fathers, and failure is an orphan, with no takers.
Metaphor
As cute as a kitten
Simile
As happy as a clam
Simile
I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio’s.
Allusion
Chocolate was her Achilles’ heel.
Allusion
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Personification
The avalanche devoured everything in its path.
Personification
Aporia
A figure of speech wherein a speaker purports or expresses to be in doubt or in perplexity regarding a question (often feigned) and asks the audience how he/she ought to proceed.
“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”
Aporia
“Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later?”
Aporia
Is rain wet?
Rhetorical Question
A parent is arguing with a child about the importance of good grades. The parent says “Do you want to live at home in the basement for the rest of your life?”
Rhetorical Question
Chiasmus
A rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures in order to produce an artistic effect.
Love as if you would one day hate,
and hate as if you would one day love.
Chiasmus
When religion was strong and science weak, men
mistook magic for medicine;
Now, when science is strong and religion weak, men
mistake medicine for magic.
Chiasmus
Litotes
A figure of speech which employs an understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, positive statement is expressed by negating its opposite expressions.
Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others.
Litotes
You are not as young as you used to be.
Litotes