Subject: Creative Writing Subject Teacher: Lerramie J.

Bato

Section:

FIGURES OF SPEECH

o are literary devices that achieve special effect by using words in distinctive ways.
o they provoke a thought process and bring depth to the language.
o using figures of speech effectively is an art.
o the more you read the more you will understand them.

TWO CATEGORIES:

1. Devices used to create sound or melody

2. Devices used to evoke imagination and emotions

Devices used to create sound or melody

1. Alliteration. This refers to the repetition of an initial consonant sound

Ex. Don’t delay dawns disarming display.

Dusk demands daylight

2. Assonance. This refers to the identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words

Ex. It beats…as it sweaps… as it cleans!

3. Consonance. Like alliteration, this is a repetition of consonant sound but in the final position.

Ex. Once you go black, you can never go back.

4. Onomatopoeia. This is the use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects they refer to.

Ex. The clock’s tick-tocks remind the old man of his impending death.

Devices used to evoke imagination and emotions

5. Simile. This is a stated comparison usually using like or as between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain
qualities in common.

Ex. On the ring, Muhammad Ali floated like a butterfly but he stung like a bee.

6. Metaphor. This is an implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something in common.

Ex. My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

7. Personification. This is a figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities
or abilities.

Ex. The picture in that magazine screamed for attention.

8. Hyperbole. This is an extravagant statement or the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened
effect.

Ex. I’m so busy trying to accomplish ten million things at once.

9. Metonymy. This is a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely
associated.
 Ex. (referring to the movie industry

Hollywood is undeterred by the mass actions against stereotyping organized by the minorities.

10. Synecdoche. This is a figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole or the whole for the part.

Ex. Rationalizing guilt is a common trait of white-collar criminals.

11. Euphemism. This refers to the substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit

Ex. Most of the informal settlers have been relocated outside Metro Manila.

12. Climax. This is a figure of speech in which a series of phrases or sentences is arranged in ascending order of rhetorical
forcefulness.

Ex. Let a man acknowledge his obligations to himself, his family, his country and his God.

13. Anticlimax. This is opposite of climax.

Ex. He has seen the ravages of war, he has known natural catastrophes, he has been to singles bars.

14. Oxymoron. This figure of speech uses incongruous or contradictory terms usually side by side with each other.

Ex. She cannot be trusted. She is a real phony friend.

15. Sarcasm. This makes use of words that mean the opposite of what the speaker or writer wants to say especially in order
to insult someone, to show irritation or to be funny.

Ex. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?

16. Irony. This refers to a statement or situation that is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

Ex. Who would expect that Bill Gates would win a computer in his company’s raffle draw?

17. Apostrophe. This figure of speech addresses an inanimate object, an abstraction or an absent person.

Ex. Moon, river…wherever you’re going, I’m going your way.

“It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort.” – Jillian Michael