Cataphora refers to a figure of speech where an earlier expression refers to or describes a forward expression. Cataphora is the opposite of anaphora, a reference forward as opposed to backward in the discourse. Example: If you want them, there are cookies in the kitchen (them is an instance of ...
Assonance is a figure of speech that is found more often in verse than in prose. It refers to the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences. Example: "That solitude which suits abstruser musings" - The Princess VII.203 by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Apostrophe is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. Example: "Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again." Paul Simon, The Sounds of Silence.
Antiphrasis is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used to mean the opposite of its normal meaning to create ironic humorous effect. From the Greek : anti "opposite" and phrasis, "diction". The adjective form is antiphrastic. Examples: He's only a child of 50 years old.She's so ...
Anticlimax refers to a figure of speech in which statements gradually descend in order of importance. Unlike climax, anticlimax is the arrangement of a series of words, phrases, or clauses in order of decreasing importance. Example: He lost his family, his car and his cell phone.
Antanaclasis is a rhetorical device in which a word is repeated and whose meaning changes in the second instance. Antanaclasis is a common type of pun. Examples: 1. Put out the light, then put out the light. - Shakespeare in Othello. This is said by Othello when he enters Desdemona's chamber ...
Adjunction is a figure of speech in which a word, phrase or clause is placed at the beginning or the end of a sentence. Examples: Fades physical beauty with disease or age. Either with disease or age physical beauty fades. High the bird flew. The bird flew high.
Merism is a figure of speech by which something is referred to by a conventional phrase that enumerates several of its constituents or traits. Examples: High and low. (To search high and low means to look for something everywhere) Flesh and bone. (Referring to the body).
