words

alliteration- the repetition of an initial consonant sound.
anaphora-the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.(contrast with epiphora and epistrophe)
antithesis- the juxtaposition  of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
apostrophe- breaking off discource to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.
assonance- identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
chiasmus- a verbal patteren in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.
Euphemism-the substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
hyperbole- an extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
irony- the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.
Litotes- a figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
metaphor- an implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
metonym- A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated: also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.
onomatopeia- the use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
oxymoron- a figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.
paradox- a statement that appears to contradict itself.
personification- a figure of speech inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
pun- a play on words, sometimes on different senses of the word and sometimes on the similar sense of sound or different words.
simile- a stated comparison( usually formed with"like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
synecdoche- a figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole (for example, ABCs for alphabet) or whole for a part( "england won the world cup in 1996".)
understatement- a figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious that it is.