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Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Contrast is the antonym of simile. In poetic compositions, it is common for poets to set out an elaborate contrast or elaborate simile as the argument. For example, John Donne and the metaphysical poets developed the conceit as a literary device, where an
Oxymorons in the narrow sense are a rhetorical device used deliberately by the speaker and intended to be understood as such by the listener. In a more extended sense, the term "oxymoron" has also been applied to inadvertent or incidental contradictions, as in the case of "dead metaphors" ("barely clothed" or "terribly good").
The term "antithesis" in rhetoric goes back to the 4th century BC, for example Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1410a, in which he gives a series of examples. An antithesis can be a simple statement contrasting two things, using a parallel structure: I defended the Republic as a young man; I shall not desert her now that I am old. (Cicero, 2nd Philippic, 2 ...
When the antiphrasal use is very common, the word can become an auto-antonym, [3] having opposite meanings depending on context. For example, Spanish dichoso [ 4 ] originally meant "fortunate, blissful" as in tierra dichosa , "fortunate land", but it acquired the ironic and colloquial meaning of "infortunate, bothersome" as in ¡Dichosas moscas ...
An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings. Each word in the pair is the antithesis of the other. A word may have more than one antonym. There are three categories of antonyms identified by the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings.
Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza, as illustrated by Gustave Doré: the characters' contrasting qualities [1] are reflected here even in their physical appearances. In any narrative, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character, typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist.
In his philosophy, Hegel ventured to describe quite a few cases of "unity of opposites", including the concepts of Finite and Infinite, Force and Matter, Identity and Difference, Positive and Negative, Form and Content, Chance and Necessity, Cause and effect, Freedom and Necessity, Subjectivity and Objectivity, Means and Ends, Subject and ...