Figurative Language Terms

Front 1

Simile

Back 1

a comparison between two or more things using the words like or as.
example: "I move fast like a cheetah on the Serengeti."

Front 2

Metaphor

Back 2

a comparison between two or more things that doesn't use the words like or as.
example: "You are an ant, while I'm the lion."

Front 3

Alliteration

Back 3

a phrase with a string of words all beginning with the same sound.
example: "Five freaky females finding sales at retail."

Front 4

Hyperbole

Back 4

an exaggeration.
example: "I fought a million rappers in an afternoon in June."

Front 5

Personification

Back 5

giving an animal or object human-like characteristics.
example: "Alright, the sky misses the sun at night."

Front 6

Paradox

Back 6

a statement that seems untrue, that seems to contradict itself.
example: "The poorest man is the richest, and the rich are poor."

Front 7

Symbol

Back 7

something that stands for something else (often something more abstract).
example: In Tupac Shakur's song Me and My Girlfriend, the "girflfriend" referenced is actually his gun.

Front 8

Assonance

Back 8

the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyme.
example: "Hear the mellow wedding bells." - Edgar Allen Poe"

Front 9

Onomatopoeia

Back 9

a word that imitates the sound it is describing.
example: "Out of reach, I pull out with a screech."

Front 10

Imagery

Back 10

a very general term that encompasses nearly any description of something that conjures an image, sound, taste, smell or feeling to mind.
example: "Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells" - T.S. Eliot