Tropes

Question 1

metaphor

Answer 1

When something is something else: the ladder of success (i.e, success is a ladder). “The office is a bee-hive of activity on Monday.” Or recall the old anti-drug commercial: “This is your brain on drugs.”

Question 2

similie

Answer 2

when something is like something else: “Her skin was like alabaster.” “He was as unpleasant as a wart.”

Question 3

metonymy

Answer 3

Using a vaguely suggestive, physical object to embody a more general idea: CROWN for royalty; the PEN is mightier than the SWORD. “If we cannot strike offenders in the heart, let us strike them in the wallet.”

Question 4

synecdoche

Answer 4

Using a part of a physical object to represent the whole object: “Twenty
eyes watched our every move” (i.e., ten people watched our every move). “A hungry
stomach has no ears” (La Fontaine). “All hands on deck!”

Question 5

puns (paronomasia)

Answer 5

A pun twists the meaning of words, often to create a
humorous effect.

Homonymic Puns - “Johnny B. Good” is a pun for “Johnny be
good.”

Sound similarities - “Casting perils before swains” (instead of “pearls before
swine”). Puns have been frequently called “the lowest form of humor.” Still, even
Shakespeare uses puns. For instance, Romeo and Juliet includes a famous pun uttered
by Mercutio as he is dying: “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”
(3.1.97-98).

Question 6

zeugma

Answer 6

Artfully using one verb with two or more different objects. If this changes
the verb’s initial meaning, the zeugma is sometimes called syllepsis:
“If we don’t hang together, we shall hang separately” (Ben Franklin).
“The queen of England sometimes takes advice in that chamber, and sometimes
tea.”
“. . . losing her heart or her necklace at the ball” (Alexander Pope).
“She exhausted both her audience and her repertoire.”

Question 7

personification

Answer 7

Giving human qualities to inanimate objects: “The ground thirsts
for rain; the wind whispered secrets to us.” Prosopopeia (also spelled prosopopoeia)
is a form of powerful personification in which an inanimate object gains the ability to
speak. For instance, the Anglo-Saxon poem, “Dream of the Rood” has the wooden
cross verbally describe the death of Christ from its own viewpoint. Eco-critical writers
might describe clear-cutting from the viewpoint of the tree. Used car salesmen might
write an advertisement from a car’s viewpoint.

Question 8

apostrophe

Answer 8

Addressing someone or some personified abstraction that is not
physically present: “Oh, Death, be not proud” (John Donne). Isaac Asimov might
begin an essay on progress by writing, “Ah, Mr. Einstein, you would be pleased to see
how far we have progressed in science.”

Question 9

erotema

Answer 9

Asking a rhetorical question to the reader as a transition or as a thought-provoking
tool before proceeding. “What should honest citizens do?”

Question 10

onomatapeia

Answer 10

Words that sound like what they mean. For example, Buzz; Click;
Rattle; Clatter; Squish; Snap, Crackle, and Pop; Grunt.

Question 11

hyperbole

Answer 11

Exaggeration: “His thundering shout could split rocks.” Or, “Yo’
mama’s so fat . . .”

Question 12

meiosis

Answer 12

Understatement (opposite of exaggeration): “I was somewhat worried when
the psychopath ran toward me with a chainsaw.” (i.e., I was terrified). Litotes
(especially popular in Old English) is a type of meiosis in which the writer uses a
statement in the negative to create the effect: “You know, Einstein is not a bad
mathematician.” (i.e., Einstein is a good mathematician.)

Question 13

anthimeria

Answer 13

Using a different part of speech to act as another, such as a verb for a
noun, or a noun for a verb, or an adjective as a verb, etc.: “Gift him with Sports
Illustrated magazine for Christmas” (as opposed to give him).
“he sang his didn’t, he danced his did.” (e. e. cummings) “I am going in search of the
great perhaps” (Rabelais).

Question 14

catachresis

Answer 14

A completely impossible figure of speech. For instance: “The tears
falling from her eyes were so sad they too began to cry with her.” “Joe will have
kittens when he hears this!” It is closely related to hyperbole and sometimes
synaesthesia. Or as Milton so elegantly phrased it, catachresis is all about “blind
mouths.”

Question 15

synaesthesia

Answer 15

(also spelled synesthesia) Mixing one type of sensory input with
another in an impossible way, such as speaking of how a color sounds, or how a smell
looks: “The scent of the rose rang like a bell through the garden.” “I caressed the
darkness with cool fingers.”

Question 16

aporia

Answer 16

Talking about not being able to talk about something: “I can’t tell you how
often writers use aporia!” “It is impossible for me to describe how horrible it was to
view the pink, runny mass.”

Question 17

aposiopesis

Answer 17

Breaking off as if unable to continue: “The fire surrounds them
while—I cannot go on.”

Question 18

oxymoron (plural oxymora, also called paradox)

Answer 18

Using contradiction in a manner
that oddly makes sense: “Without laws, we can have no freedom.” Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar also makes use of a famous oxymoron: “Cowards die many times before
their deaths” (2.2.32). The Bible itself contains many a paradox: “He that would save
his life must lose it; and he that would lose his life will save it”(Mark 8:35).