Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a PhraseWriting is not like chemical engineering. The figures of speech should not be learned the same way as the periodic table of elements. This is because figures of speech are not about hypothetical structures in things, but about real potentialities within language and within ourselves. The "figurings" of speech reveal the apparently limitless plasticity of language itself. We are inescapably confronted with the intoxicating possibility that we can make language do for us almost anything we want. Or at least a Shakespeare can. The figures of speech help to see how he does it, and how we might. Therefore, in the chapters presented in this volume, the quotations from Shakespeare, the Bible, and other sources are not presented to exemplify the definitions. Rather, the definitions are presented to lead to the quotations. And the quotations are there to show us how to do with language what we have not done before. They are there for imitation. |
Contents
Preface | 2 |
To And or Not to And | 5 |
Effective Misspelling | 19 |
Missing Links and Headless Horsemen | 27 |
Man Bites Dog | 39 |
Reds in the Red | 49 |
More Than Enough | 61 |
There There | 73 |
Repetition Again | 83 |
Conclusion | 97 |
Abbreviations | 100 |
| 101 | |
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Common terms and phrases
adjective anadiplosis anastrophe antanaclasis anthimeria antiptosis aposiopesis asyndeton AYLI begin behold Bible called catachresis cheese common conjunction dark dead death deviation from ordinary digressions doth earth effect Eliot ellipsis enallage epanados epanalepsis epanorthosis epizeuxis evil examples Exod eyes Father fight figures of repetition figures of speech frequently give glory grammatical hand handbook hath heart heaven hendiadys hypallage hyperbaton isolcolon James James Joyce Joe Jacobs Joyce King language least Lord Matt metaplasmic figures metonymy misspell mortal never Nonetheless noun omission omitted ordinary usage paradiastole passage peace perhaps pleonasm polyptoton polysyndeton praeteritio preposition question reader repeated rhetoric saith seems Shakespeare simple Sometimes Spenser stone substitution synecdoche thee things thou tmesis unto verb villain Virgil voice woman word or phrase writing zeugma Мас