Tropes

A word or phrase repeatedly used in association with a person or thing, as in rosy-fingered Dawn; always draws from some aspect or quality.

The use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.

Use of a word in such a way as to convey a meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the word.

Deliberate use of understatement in which the affirmative is expressed by a negative of the contrary.

Implied comparison between two things of unlike nature; states an equivalence between terms taken from separate semantic domains. (From the Greek word to transfer)

Substitution of some attribute or suggestive word for what is actually meant; replaces or juxtaposes contiguous terms within the same semantic or perceptual domain; the name of a part for the name of the whole (see synecdoche).

A new word or usage, as in "womanist".

Use of words whose sound echoes the sense.

The yoking of two terms which are ordinarily contradictory.

An apparently contradictory statement that nevertheless contains a measure of truth.

Investing abstractions for inanimate objects for a heightened effect.

A generic name for those figures of speech that make a play on words, e.g.: Zeugma, or yoking, in which a single word stands in the same grammatical relation to two or more words, but with some alteration in its meaning from one instance to the next.

Asking a question, not for the purpose of eliciting an answer but for the purpose of asserting or denying something obliquely.

Explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature using "like" or "as".

Use of a word understood differently in relation to two or more other words, which it modifies or governs.

Figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole. This draws its terms from a single domain; however, one term always includes or is included by the other as a kind for a type.