FIGURES

AND

TROPES

FIGURES AND TROPES

What is the opposite of figures and tropes?

• Literal

What is a Trope?

Some say figures and

tropes are more for

decoration.

WHAT ARE THEY USED

FOR?

Others say they make you

look deeper into the meaning

of a text and shape its

meaning.

DEAD METAPHORS

A figure of speech that has lost its force and

imaginative effectiveness through frequent use.

• “Legs of a chair”

HYPERBOLE

A vast exaggeration.

• Elvis Presley being called the “king”.

METONYMY

A figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of

one object or concept for that of another to which it is

related, or of which it is a part.

• Crown/Queen

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Giving human characteristics to something that is

not.

• Arthur the aardvark.

METAPHOR

Comparing something with an unlike thing

without using like or as.

• Love is a battlefield.

Tenor and Vehicle

• Juliet is the sun.

SIMILE

Comparing something with an unlike thing using

like or as.

• “Life is like a box of chocolates”. – Tom Hanks in

Forest Gump

SYNECDOCHE

Using a part to refer to a whole.

• “Twenty sails came into the harbor.”

ANIMISM

An inanimate object is given life like

characteristics.

• When god is angry it might rain.

PARONOMASIA

A pun or word ploy.

• Without geometry, life is pointless.

CATHARSIS

Oedipus the “T” Rex

The eliminating of the

emotions or relieving of

emotional tensions, especially

through certain kinds of art, as

tragedy or music.

• When Oedipus Rex discovers that his wife is his own mother and the person he had killed on the road was his own father.

ONOMATOPOEIA

The naming of a thing or action by a vocal

imitation of the sound associated with it.

• Buzz, hiss, bang.

PERSONIFICATION

The attribution of a personal nature or character

to inanimate objects or abstract notions.

• The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.

INFORMATION FROM…

http://dictionary.reference.com/

Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to

Literature, Criticism and Theory. Harlow, U.K.:

Pearson/Longman, 2009. Print.

"Tropes and Figures." Wake Forest University. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.

<http://www.wfu.edu/~zulick/454/figures/tropesindex.htm>.