FIGURES OF SPEECH FIGURES OF SPEECH SIMILE A figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared,

usually in a phrase introduced by like or as. EXAMPLE

Examples and Observations: "He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow." (George Eliot, Adam Bede)

"Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity." (Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary)

"Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at

terrific speed and driven by a four-yearold child. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.'" (Lord Dunsany)

"Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep." (Carl Sandburg)

"My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain." (W.H. Auden)

"He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food." (Raymond Chandler)

"The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they become superimposed." (F.L. Lucas)

"you fit into me like a hook into an eye

a fish hook an open eye" (Margaret Atwood)

"She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat." (James Joyce, "The Boarding House")

"She has a voice like a baritone sax issuing from an oil drum, and hams even with her silences." (John Simon, reviewing Kathleen Turner in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, April 2005)

"Good coffee is like friendship: rich and warm and strong." (slogan of Pan-American Coffee Bureau)

"Life is rather like a tin of sardines: we're all of us looking for the key." (Alan Bennett)

"Matt Leinart slid into the draft like a bald tire on black ice." (Rob Oller, Columbus Dispatch, Feb. 25, 2007)

2.METAPHOR A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in

Examples:

"Between the lower east side

common. A metaphor expresses the unfamiliar (the tenor) in terms of the familiar (the vehicle). When Neil Young sings, "Love is a rose," "rose" is the vehicle for "love," the tenor. (In cognitive linguistics, the terms target and source are roughly equivalent to tenor and vehicle.) Adjective: metaphorical.

tenements the sky is a snotty handkerchief." (Marge Piercy, "The Butt of Winter")

"The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner." (Cynthia Ozick, "Rosa")

"But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill." (William Sharp, "The Lonely Hunter")

"Men's words are bullets, that their enemies take up and make use of against them." (George Savile, Maxims of State)

"A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind." (Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors)

"The rain came down in long knitting needles." (Enid Bagnold, National Velvet)

Lenny: Hey, maybe there is no cabin. Maybe it's one of them metaphorical things. Carl: Oh yeah, yeah. Like maybe the cabin is the place inside each of us, created by our goodwill and teamwork. Lenny: Nah, they said there would be sandwiches. (The Simpsons)

"Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food." (Austin O'Malley, Keystones of Thought)

"It would be more illuminating . . . to say that the metaphor creates the similarity than to say that it formulates some similarity antecedently existing." (Max Black, Models and Metaphors, 1962)

3.PERSONIFICATION A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is given human qualities or abilities.

Examples and Observations: As personifications of their respective nations, England and the U.S., John Bull and Uncle Sam became

popular during the 19th century.

The wind stood up and gave a shout. He whistled on his fingers and

Kicked the withered leaves about And thumped the branches with his hand And said he'd kill and kill and kill, And so he will and so he will. (James Stephens, "The Wind")

"The operation is over. On the table, the knife lies spent, on its side, the bloody meal smear-dried upon its flanks. The knife rests." (Richard Selzer, "The Knife")

"Personification, with allegory, was the literary rage in the 18th century, but it goes against the modern grain and today is the feeblest of metaphorical devices." (Rene Cappon, Associated Press Guide to News Writing, 2000)

"Only the champion daisy trees were serene. After all, they were part of a rain forest already two thousand years old and scheduled for eternity, so they ignored the men and continued to rock the diamondbacks that slept in their arms. It took the river to persuade them that indeed the world was altered." (Toni Morrison, Tar Baby)

"The road isn't built that can make it breathe hard!" (slogan for Chevrolet automobiles)

"Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There was no one there." (proverb quoted by Christopher Moltisanti, The Sopranos)

"Oreo: Milks favorite cookie." (slogan on a package of Oreo cookies)

"The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his

neon claws!" (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)