Rhetorical Terms Flashcards
A play on words with sexual connotations.
Double Entendre
A word that sounds like what it describes.
“Buzz, boom”
Onomatopoeia
Parallel comparisons.
“If science is a tree, physics is a large branch.”
Analogy
Ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman beings or things.
“The sea was very angry that day, my friends.”
Personification
Symbolizing a concept with an object.
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Metonymy
Using a part of something to represent the whole :
“All hands on deck.”
Synecdoche
A brief renaming or elaboration:
“Bright eyed Athena”
Epithet
Exaggerating an idea to its furthest extreme.
“Donald Trump, a greater President than Washington and Lincoln put together.”
Hyperbole
Downplaying reality
On a day his house was burnt down: my day didn’t go so well
Understatement
Understating reality to avoid offending sensitive listeners:
“He died peacefully”
Euphemism
A seemingly self-contradictory statement or phrase that is nevertheless true
“It was the best of times, the worst of times”
Paradox
A contradiction in terms:
“Jumbo shrimp”
Oxymoron
Consecutive phrases that use identical grammatical construction:
“Of the people, by the people”
Parallelism
Interruption of a sentence:
The 2015 Chicago Cubs (possibly the best Cubs team in a century) could very well win it all.
Parenthesis
Emphatic interruption of a sentence:
“Roy Haynes–what a great drummer!– continues to play masterfully at age 90.”
Exclamation
