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Top 20 figure of speech and example of figure of speech?

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This page has been copied without permission or attribution from About.com Grammar & Composition: http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/20figures.htm

The original article contains more examples--and none of the mistakes introduced here.

The Top 20 Figures
^1. ^Alliteration^{Repetition of an initial consonant sound.}
^Eg. ^{-"A moist young moon hung above the mist of a neighboring meadow."
(Vladimir Nabokov,} ^{Conclusive Evidence}⁾
^{-"Guinness is good for you."
(advertising slogan)}
^{-"Good men are gruff and grumpy, cranky, crabbed, and cross."
(Clement Freud)}
^{-"My style is public negotiations for parity, rather than private negotiations for position."
(Jesse Jackson)}

^2. ^Anaphora^{Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.}
^Eg, ^"^{We shall} ^{go on to the end,} ^{we shall fight} ^{in France,} ^{we shall fight} ^{on the seas and oceans,} ^{we shall fight} ^{with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,} ^{we shall} ^{defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,} ^{we shall fight} ^{on the beaches,} ^{we shall fight} ^{on the landing grounds,} ^{we shall fight} ^{in the fields and in the streets,} ^{we shall fight} ^{in the hills;} ^{we shall} ^{never surrender."}
^3. ^Antithesis^{The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.}
^Eg. ^{"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing."
(Goethe)}
^4. ^Apostrophe^{Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.}
^Eg. ^{"O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?"
(anonymous, 16th c.)}

^5. ^Assonance^{Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.}
^{Eg. "Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea."
(W.B. Yeats, "}^Byzantium^")

^6. ^Chiasmus^{A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.}
^Eg. ^{"Nice to see you, to see you, nice!"
(British TV entertainer Bruce Forsyth)}

^7. ^Euphemism^{The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.}

^· ^Eg. ^{Dr. House: I'm busy.
Thirteen: We need you to . . .
Dr. House: Actually, as you can see, I'm not busy. It's just a} ^euphemism ^{for "get the hell out of here."}

^8. ^Hyperbole^{An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.}
^Eg. ^{"Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to} ^Vietnam^, ^Iraq^{, and} ^Afghanistan^{, and I can say without}^hyperbole ^{that this is a million times worse than all of them put together."}

^9. ^Irony^{The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.}

^10. ^Litotes^{A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.}
^11. ^Metaphor^{An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.}
^12. ^Metonymy^{A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.}
^13. ^Onomatopoeia^{The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.}
^14. ^Oxymoron^{A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side}
^15. ^Paradox^{A statement that appears to contradict itself.}
^16. ^{Personification}^{A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.}
^17. ^Pun^{A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.}
^18. ^Simile^{A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common}
^19. ^Synechdoche^{A figure of speech is 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.}
^20. ^{Understatement}^{A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is}

First answer by ID2079183647. Last edit by Metaforce. Contributor trust: 1 [recommend contributor ]. Question popularity: 10 [recommend question].

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