| A | B |
|---|
| Alliteration | the repetition of the same sound beginning several words or syllables in sequence. |
| Allusion | Brief reference to a person, event, or place (real or fictitious) or to a work of art. |
| Anaphora | repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines) |
| Antimetabole | The repetition of words in reverse order |
| Antithesis | Opposition, or contrast, of ideas or words in a parallel construction |
| Archaic diction | Old-fashioned or outdated choice of words |
| Asyndeton | Omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words. |
| Cumulative sentence | Sentence that completes the main idea at the beginning of the sentence and then builds and adds on. |
| Hortative sentence | Sentence that exhorts, urges, entreats, implores, or calls to action; urging or strongly encouraging sentence; language that calls to action |
| Imperative sentence | a sentence used to command or enjoin |
| Inversion | a sentence in which the verb precedes the subject; variation of the subject-verb-object order |
| Juxtaposition | placement of two things closely together to emphasize similarities or differences |
| Metaphor | Figure of speech that compares two things without using like or as |
| Oxymoron | Paradoxical juxtaposition of words that seem to contradict one another |
| Parallelism | Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases or clauses |
| Periodic sentence | A sentence whose main clause is withheld until the end (next to the period). |
| Personification | Assigning lifelike characteristics to inanimate objects |
| Rhetorical question | Figure of speech in the form of a question posed for effect rather than for the purpose of getting an actual answer |
| Synecdoche | Figure of speech that uses a part to represent a whole (“all hands on deck!”) |
| zeugma | Use of two different words in a grammatically similar way that produces different, often incongruous meanings. Comes from the Greek word for “to yoke.” In this figure of speech, a single word or phrase is used to join two or more objects, for rhetorical effect. For example, “He held his temper and her hand.” |
