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| The repetition of an initial consonant sound. |
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| Extending a metaphor so that objects, persons, and actions in a text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text. |
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| The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses. |
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| The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases. |
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(1) A tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion.
(2) A brief statement of a principle. |
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| A rhetorical term for breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing. |
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| The identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words. |
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| The omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses (opposite of polysyndeton). |
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| A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed. |
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| An argumentative strategy by which a speaker or writer acknowledges the validity of an opponent's point. |
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| A set expression of two or more words that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words. |
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| Denunciatory or abusive language; discourse that casts blame on somebody or something. |
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| A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. |
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| A long and frequently involved sentence, marked by suspended syntax, in which the sense is not completed until the final word--usually with an emphatic climax. Contrast with loose sentence. |
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| A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty"). |
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| A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side. |
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| A statement that appears to contradict itself. |
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| Sentence style that appears to follow the mind as it worries a problem through, mimicking the "rambling, associative syntax of conversation"--the opposite of periodic sentence style. |
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| A text or performance that uses irony, derision, or wit to expose or attack human vice, foolishness, or stupidity. |
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| A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. |
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| A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it. |
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| The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use may be grammatically or logically correct with only one. |
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