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Antiphrasis is the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is obvious what the true intention is. [1] Some authors treat and use antiphrasis just as irony, euphemism or litotes. [2] When the antiphrasal use is very common, the word can become an auto-antonym, [3] having opposite meanings ...
For example, the interjection word indicating agreement is characteristic of African-American English. [ 27 ] Two examples of variation over time can be seen in the Corpus of Historical American English, which shows that nay was among the most common interjections in 1820 but by the 2010s had become significantly less common. [ 28 ]
An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. [1] [2] It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations (ouch!, wow!
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word original can mean "authentic", or "new, never done before". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
The post 26 Palindrome Examples: Words and Phrases That Are the Same Backwards and Forwards appeared first on Reader's Digest. Palindrome words are spelled the same backward and forward.
Oxymorons are words that communicate contradictions. An oxymoron (plurals: oxymorons and oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction. As a rhetorical device, an oxymoron illustrates a point to communicate and reveal a paradox.
Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.
An antithesis must always contain two ideas within one statement. The ideas may not be structurally opposite, but they serve to be functionally opposite when comparing two ideas for emphasis. [4] According to Aristotle, the use of an antithesis makes the audience better understand the point the speaker is trying to make. Further explained, the ...