Alliteration
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Examples
- Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. (pppppp)
- Occurance of ‘P’
- A good cook could cook as many cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies.
- Occurance of ‘C’
Allusion
An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.
Example
- His smile is like kryptonite to me.
- She felt like she had a golden ticket
Simile
It is a figure of speech that involves the comparison of one thing with another.
Example:
- As brave as Tiger,
- As Goods as Buddha.
- His explanation is as clear as Water etc.
Metaphor
It is a figure of speech in which a phrase or a word denotes a type of object or action in a way that is not literally true. But it helps in comparison.
It can be also said that as a common poetic device where an object or subject of the poem is described to unrelated object.
Example:
- Man of Steel
- Heart of Gold
- The world is a stage
- Life is a jig saw puzzle.
Personification
It is an attribution of giving human characteristics to non-human things.
Example:
- My alarm clock yells at me to get out of bed every morning.
- Lightning danced across the sky.
- The wind howled in the night
- The leaves waved in the wind
- The ocean heaved a sigh
- The Sun smiled at us
Oxymoron
It is a figure of speech that is apparently contradictory.
Example:
- Seriously Funny
- Original Iphone copy
- Plastic Glasses
Onomatopoeia
- It is a language that names something by imitating the sound associated with it.
Example:
- Tik Tok Clock
- Boom Crackers
- Splat
- Bang
- Haha
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
Example
“Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly – doctor-like – controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill” Sonnet 66 by William Shakespeare.
Ellipsis
“The omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues“. -Oxford Dictionary
An ellipsis is a punctuation mark that consists of three dots with a space before, after, and between them.
Example:
“ After college, I went to his house, which was a few streets away, and then came home.”
Rhyme Scheme
A rhyming scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other.
Example:
| Bid me to weep, and I will weep | A |
| While I have eyes to see | B |
| And having none, yet I will keep | A |
| A heart to weep for thee | B |
In the above poem, the last word of the First and last word of the 3rd line has a similar sound. So can be considered A(Rhyme scheme). Then the last word of the second line and the last word of the fourth line sound similar, so can be taken as B(Rhyme Scheme).
The overall Rhyme scheme of this poem is “ABAB“
Rhyming Words
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words.
– Rhyming Words – Repetition – Apostrophe