Sunday, April 4, 2010




Exclamation: a sharp or sudden utterance, or a spoken interjection.

Examples:

In a sentence: Lily's song was interrupted many times by rude exclamations from her enemy, Biff.

An exclamation itself: "Hey you! Come back!"


Thursday, April 1, 2010

Anaphora


(click image for enlargement)

Parenthesis

Parenthesis: an amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence, inserted in a passage from which is usually set off by punctuation; remark or passage that departs from theme of discourse; one or both of the curved marks (  ) used in writing and printing  to enclose a parenthetical expression or to group a symbolic unit in a logical or mathematical expression

Example: "For the vagabond-voyeur (and for travelers voyeurism is irresistible), nothing is not for notice, nothing is banal, nothing is ordinary: not a rock, not the shoulder of a passer-by, not a teapot."
- Cynthia Ozick, "The Shock of Teapots"

parallelism

Parallelism: To give a two or more parts of a sentence similar form so as to give the whole sentence a pattern.
Ex: He ate all his spinach, ate all his carrots and ate all his green beans.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Euphemism


eu·phe·mism –(noun)

1. the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.
Examples: "Heavy set" vs. fat
"to pass away" vs. to die
"rest room" vs toilet

Antithesis


Antithesis: Contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses or sentences.
Easy on the eyes, hard on the heart.

Onomatopoeia



Onomatopoeia

the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it.

(Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary)