| A | B |
|---|
| allegory | characters or events in narrative used to express abstract ideas or principles |
| alliteration | repetition of sound(s) in two or more words in a line |
| anaphora | repetition of word(s) at the beginning of successive clauses |
| aposiopesis | breaking off in the middle of a sentence |
| apostrophe | turning from the audience to address someone or something else |
| asyndeton | omission of conjunctions in a closely related series |
| chiasmus | ABBA word order |
| ecphrasis | poetic description of a work of art |
| ellipsis | omission of a word easily understood from context |
| enjambment | completion in the following line of a unit begun in the preceding line |
| hendiadys | two words joined by a conjunction to express a single, complex idea |
| hyperbaton | separation of words that normally stand together |
| hyperbole | bold exaggeration |
| hysteron proteron | that which should come later comes earlier |
| irony | saying the opposite of what is intended |
| litotes | understatement by affirming the negative of the contrary |
| metaphor | a vivid, implicit comparison by calling one thing by an unrelated name |
| metonymy | calling something by a closely related name, usually using the concrete to express the abstract |
| onomatopoeia | word whose sound suggests its meaning |
| oxymoron | an expression that combines seemingly contradictory elements |
| personification | attributing human qualities to inanimate objects |
| pleonasm | use of superfluous or redundant words |
| polyptoton | repetition of different forms of the same or related words |
| polysyndeton | repetition of conjunctions |
| praeteritio | mentioning something while pretending to pass over it |
| prolepsis | a future event or state referred to as though already accomplished |
| prosopopoeia | speaking as another person or object |
| simile | explicit comparison between two things using like or as |
| synchysis | interlocking word order (ABAB) |
| synecdoche | a kind of metonymy: a part used to express the whole, or vice versa |
| tmesis | separation of parts of a compound word |
| transferred epithet | adjective applied to one noun when it properly applies to another, often involving personification |
| tricolon crescens | a combination of three elements increasing in length |
| zeugma | a condensed expression in which one word is syntactically connected to two other, usually in two distinct senses |
