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Tropes and Schemes

Tropes

Tropes—deviation from normal signification of a word for rhetorical effect, or figures of speech with an unexpected twist in the meaning of words; usually refers to word use. Anthimeria—using one part of speech to act as another, such as adjective for a noun or noun for a verb, e.g. “We partied last night” (noun as verb), “Campbell’s: the soup that eats like a meal” (direct object as subject). Apostrophe—a person or an abstract quality is directly address, whether present or not, e.g. “Freedom! Thou beguiling mistress!” Catachresis—a completely impossible figure of speech, e.g. “Mom had a cow when she found out.” Ennalage—intentionally misusing grammar to characterize a speaker or to create a memorable phrase, e.g. “You pays you money, and you takes your choice.” Hyperbole—exaggeration for effect Irony—using a word or phrase to convey the opposite of their apparent meaning; “Scrubbing the toilet is my favorite chore.” Litotes—understatement for effect, sometimes specifically used to refer to an ironically negative understatement, e.g. “Einstein wasn’t a bad mathematician.” Metaphor—implied comparison between two dissimilar things; a word or phrase is transferred from its literal meaning to stand for something else; unlike similes, rather that saying one thing is like another, a metaphor says one thing is another. Metaplasmus—misspelling a word to create a rhetorical effect, such as to capture dialect, e.g. spelling “dog” as “dawg.” Metonymy—a type of metaphor, substitution of an associated word for the subject, e.g. “hobbits” for Lord-of-the-Ring fans, or “lug nut” for an auto-repair hobbyist. Onomatopoeia—a word whose syllables resemble the sound they signify, “gong,” “thud,” “itch,” “crackle,” “burp” Oxymoron—contradictory terms juxtaposed, e.g. “a cheerful pessimist.” Periphrasis—substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a name, “fickle mistress” for luck, “big man upstairs” for God Personification—endowing objects abstractions with human attributes, “A lie gets halfway around the world before it gets a chance to put its pants on,” Winston Churchill Prosthesis—adding an extra syllable to the beginning of a word, e.g. “I beweep my misfortune.” Pun—a homophone is repeated but used in a different sense, used for several varieties of word play Rhetorical question—a leading question, or a question not intended to be answered Simile—overt comparison between two dissimilar things, usually employs “like” or “as” Synecdoche—a part stands for the whole, e.g. “skirt” for a woman, “stuffed shirt” for a businessman Synoesthesia—mixing one type of sensory input with another in an impossible way, “the scent of jasmine rang through the garden,” “that dress is so loud I can’t hear myself think.” Zeugma—artfully using one verb with two or more different subjects or objects, changing the verb's meaning with each, sometimes called syllepsis: "If we don’t hang together, we shall hang separately" (Ben Franklin). "The queen of England sometimes takes advice in that chamber, and sometimes tea." “She exhausted both her audience and her repertoire.” "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject," Winston Churchill.

Schemes

Schemes—arrangement of words for rhetorical effect; usually refers to sentence structure Alliosis—alternatives presented in a balanced manner, e.g. “You can smoke now and die sooner or quit now and live longer.” Alliteration—repetition of initial or medial consonants in associated words near one another Anadiplosis—repeating the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next, e.g. Nietzsche said, “Talent is adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.” Anaphora—repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. "Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach." Aristotle Anapodoton—deliberate sentence fragment. Anastrophe—customary word order changed for emphasis, e.g. “Ask not what your country can do for you . . . ;” “The first time ever I saw your face . . .” Antimetabole—repetition in reverse order, e.g. “One should eat to live, not live to eat.” "Winners never quit and quitters never win." Anonymous Antithesis—expression of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure, e.g. “Americans in need are not strangers, they are citizens, not problems, but priorities.” Aporia—talking about not being able to talk about something, e.g. “I can’t tell you how excruciating it was to watch the surgeon pull the fly larva out of the little boy’s eyeball.” Aposiopesis—breaking off as if unable to continue, e.g. “Oh, dread! Oh, dread! It swallowed my [slurp! gulp!]” Apposition—placing one noun or noun-equivalent beside another in a sentence to add description or explanation. The noun (or equivalent) must be equal in function and bear the same relation to the rest of the sentence as the original noun, eg. “Alexander, the coppersmith, did very much evil.” “The second stage—the translation of forecast pressure distribution—was most difficult.” Assonance—repetition of initial or medial vowel sounds in associated words near one another. Asyndeton—omission of connectives between a series of clauses Climax—arrangement in order of increasing importance or impact, eg. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Diacope—uninterrupted repetition, or repetition with only one or two words between each repeated word or phrase, e.g. “The horror, the horror.” Ellipsis—omitting a word implied by the previous clause, e.g. “Their soldiers killed six of the villagers, ours eight.” Epanalepsis—repeating a word from the beginning of a clause at the end of the same clause, e.g. “year after year,” “man’s inhumanity to man,” “dog eat dog.” Epistrophe—the same word repeated at the end of successive phrases, e.g. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck . . .” Parallelism—the expression of similar meanings in similar grammatical constructions. Polysyndeton—deliberate use of many connectives, e.g. “I want six scoops of coconut ice cream on two brownies with hot fudge and whipped cream and chopped peanuts and sliced banana and one spoon and a big glass of water.” Symploce—repeating words at both the beginning and the ending of a phrase, e.g. Saint Paul wrote, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I,” (2 Corinthians 11:22).