English Grammar

* allegory: Extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject * alliteration: Repetition of the first consonant sound in a phrase. * allusion: Indirect reference to another work of literature or art * anacoenosis: Posing a question to an audience, often with the implication that it shares a common interest with the speaker * antanaclasis: A form of pun in which a word is repeated in two different senses * anthimeria: Substitution of one part of speech for another, often turning a noun into a verb * anthropomorphism: Ascribing human characteristics to something that is not human, such as an animal or a god (see zoomorphism) * antimetabole: Repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed grammatical order * antiphrasis: Word or words used contradictory to their usual meaning, often with irony * antonomasia: Substitution of a phrase for a proper name or vice versa * aphorism: Tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion, an adage * apophasis: Invoking an idea by denying its invocation * apostrophe: Addressing a thing, an abstraction or a person not present * archaism: Use of an obsolete, archaic, word (a word used in olden language, e.g. Shakespeare's language) * auxesis: Form of hyperbole, in which a more important sounding word is used in place of a more descriptive term * bathos: Pompous speech with a ludicrously mundane worded anti-climax * catachresis: Mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault) * circumlocution: "Talking around" a topic by substituting or adding words, as in euphemism or periphrasis * commiseration: Evoking pity in the audience * correctio: Linguistic device used for correcting one's mistakes, a form of which is epanorthosis * denominatio: Another word for metonymy * double negative: Grammar construction that can be used as an expression and it is the