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Concise definitions, usage tips, and lots of examples for 136 literary devices and terms.
Here’s a quick and simple definition: Anaphora is a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences. For example, Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech contains anaphora: "So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
The refrain is a versatile literary device that takes many forms and has many purposes. Writers, musicians, and orators use refrains in songs, speeches, and poems in order to drive a point home, aid a reader or listener's memory, establish central themes, and create structure.
Metaphor Definition. What is metaphor? Here’s a quick and simple definition: A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as in the sentence "Love is a battlefield."
Symbolism is a literary device in which a writer uses one thing—usually a physical object or phenomenon—to represent something more abstract. A strong symbol usually shares a set of key characteristics with whatever it is meant to symbolize, or is related to it in some other way.
A concise definition of Climax (Figure of Speech) along with usage tips, an expanded explanation, and lots of examples.
Allegory Definition. What is an allegory? Here’s a quick and simple definition: An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events.
Pun Definition. What is a pun? Here’s a quick and simple definition: A pun is a figure of speech that plays with words that have multiple meanings, or that plays with words that sound similar but mean different things. The comic novelist Douglas Adams uses both types of pun when he writes: "You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish.
Dictionary definition of figurative language: According to the dictionary, figurative language is simply any language that contains or uses figures of speech. This definition would mean that figurative language includes the use of both tropes and schemes.
Here’s a quick and simple definition: Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to emphasize a point, rather than be taken literally.