Latin Figures Of Speech

Front 1

allegory

Back 1

narrative in which abstract ideas figure as circumstances or persons, usually to enforce a moral truth

Front 2

alliteration

Back 2

repetition of the same sound, usually initial, in two or more words or syllables

Front 3

anaphora

Back 3

repetition of a word, usually at the beginning of successive clauses or phrases, for emphasis or for pathetic effect.

Front 4

aposiopesis

Back 4

an abrupt failure to complete a sentence, for rhetorical effect

Front 5

anastrophe

Back 5

inversion of the usual order of words, such as placing a preposition after, instead of before, the word it governs

Front 6

apostrophe

Back 6

address of an absent person or an abstraction, usually for pathetic effect

Front 7

assonance

Back 7

the close recurrence of similar sounds, usually used of vowel sounds

Front 8

asyndeton

Back 8

omission of conjunctions in a closely related series

Front 9

chiasmus

Back 9

arrangement of pairs of words in opposite order, for example, noun A, adjective A, adjective B, noun C. often emphasizes contrast

Front 10

ecphrasis

Back 10

an apparent digression describing a place connected at the end of the description to the main narrative by hic or huc

Front 11

ellipsis

Back 11

omission of one or more words necessary to the sense, but easily supplied by the content

Front 12

enjambment

Back 12

the running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so that closely related words fall in different lines

Front 13

hendiadys

Back 13

use of two nouns connected by a conjunction with the meaning of one modified noun

Front 14

hyperbole

Back 14

exaggeration for effect

Front 15

hysteron proteron

Back 15

reversal of chronological order in order to put the more important idea first

Front 16

interlocked order

Back 16

arrangement of pairs of words so that one word of each pair is between the words of the other. the arrangement normally emphasizes the close association of the pairs

Front 17

irony

Back 17

the use, clearly intentional or apprently unintentional, of words with a meaning contrary to the situation

Front 18

litotes

Back 18

an understatement for emphasis, usually an assertion of something by denying the opposite

Front 19

metaphor

Back 19

an implied comparision, that is, the use of a word or words suggesting a likeness between what is actually being described and something else

Front 20

metonymy

Back 20

use of one noun in place of another closely related noun, to avoid common or prosaic words

Front 21

onomatopoeia

Back 21

use of words whose wound suggests the sense

Front 22

oxymoron

Back 22

the use of apparently contradictory words in the same phrase

Front 23

personification

Back 23

treatment of inanimate objects as human

Front 24

pleonasm

Back 24

use of unnecessary words (superfluous)

Front 25

polysyndeton

Back 25

use of unnecessary conjunctions

Front 26

prolepsis

Back 26

use of a word before it is appropriate in the context. a proleptic adjective does not apply to its noun until after the action of the verb, as is often best translated with a clause or phrase to bring out the emphasis on the adjective

Front 27

simile

Back 27

an expressed comparison, introduced by a word such as similis, qualis, velut. epic similes tend to be long, to relate to nature, and to digress from the point of comparison

Front 28

praeterition

Back 28

claiming to not mention something that one really intends to say

Front 29

synecdoche

Back 29

use of the part for the whole to avoid common words or to focus attention on a particular part

Front 30

tmesis

Back 30

separation of the parts of a compound word by another word, usually for metrical convenience

Front 31

transferred epithet

Back 31

a device of emphasis in which the poet attributes some characteristic of a thing to another thing closely associated with it (twin night)

Front 32

zeugma

Back 32

use of a verb or adjective with two words, to only one of which it literally applies

Front 33

hyperbaton

Back 33

a figure of speech, such as anastrophe or hysteron proteron, using deviation from normal or logical word order to produce an effect

Front 34

tricolon crescens

Back 34

a three part increase of emphasis or enlargement of meaning.