Figure of Speech Part - 2

 11. Transferred Epithet – The epithet or the qualifying adjective is sometimes transferred from a person to a thing. For example,

a) He lay all night on his sleepless pillow.

b) He closed his busy life at the age of

seventy six .

c) He was engaged in a dishonest calling.

d) The prisoner was placed in the condemned cell.

A happy thought, an unlucky remark, the foolish observation, a mortal wound, a learner book.

12. Repetition: Sometimes an expression is used to intensify feeling or conviction by repeating the principal word or adding equivalent words.

 For example:

1) A little grave

    A little, little grave.

 Here the poet emphasizes the fact that even the king has to die like his subject. Dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of the moon.

 Here the word dark is repeated three times to suggest a sense of utter darkness.

2) Alone, alone, all all alone

    Alone on a wide wide sea.

 Here the poet tries to describe the sense of terrible loneliness.

13. Pathetic fallacy - Sometimes nature is regarded as taking active interest in human affairs. Pathetic fallacy, too, therefore is a kind of personification; but the main difference between them is that the element of nature’s interest in man’s destiny is not present in personification. In pathetic fallacy nature is happy or sad at the rise or fall of man. For example;

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her sighing through all her works, gave signs of awe that all was lost.

In the above lines, Earth and Nature have been shown to be in sorrow at the loss of man’s life. They are actively interested in human affairs.

14. Epigram – it is a brief pointed saying frequently introducing antithetical ideas which excite, surprise and arrest attention. Examples:

i. The child is the father of the man.

ii. Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.

iii. Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

iv. Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

15. Irony – Irony is the mode of speech in which the real meaning is exactly the opposite of that which is literally conveyed.

                          OR

Irony is a type of statement which has double meaning - surface meaning and inner meaning. The inner meaning is opposite to the surface meaning and the intention of the speaker is to convey this inner meaning.

 In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Antony again and again describes Brutus and his friends as honourable men but what he really wishes to suggest is that they are not honourable at all.Here honourable means dishonourable. In this way irony is a sort of veiled ( hidden) attack. For example:

i. No doubt but ye are the people and wisdom shall die with you.

ii. I fear I wrong the honourable man whose daggers have stabbed Caesar.

iii. Yet Brutus says that he was ambitious And Brutus is an honourable man.

16. Sarcasm - In sarcasm, the attack is not veiled in words as in irony. The author says what he means but in such a way as to imply ridicule, censure, disapproval or contempt.

 The essence of sarcasm is giving pain by the use of bitter words. Irony, too, cuts quite deep but sarcasm cuts with an iron dagger. For example;

• Swift describes mankind as the most pernicious race of little odious vermin.

• A being erect upon two legs, and bearing the semblance of a man –

• Charles Dickens

• We Christians have enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love each other – Swift .

17. Euphemism - An inoffensive expression used in place of a blunt one that is felt to be disagreeable or embarrassing. Euphemism are used frequently with reference to such subjects as religion ( Gosh darn! for God damn ), death (pass away instead of of dies), bodily functions (comfort station instead of toilet) and sex (to sleep with instead of to have sexual intercourse with)

                             OR

An expression that we use instead of a more direct one when we are talking about something that is unpleasant or embarrassing.

Onomatopoeia - Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that uses words to describe the sounds made by all living things including people, animals, birds and all inanimate objects.

                               OR

Onomatopoeia designates a word, or a combination of words whose sound seems to resemble closely the sound it denotes.

Examples; hiss, buzz, rattle, bang, etc..

17. Litotes - The use of a negative before some words to indicate a strong affirmation in the opposite direction. For example;

i. The man is no fool. (very clever)

ii. I am not a little surprised. (greatly)

iii. He is not the brightest man in the world = He is stupid.

Litotes means plain or simple.

 The assertion of an affirmative by negating its contrary.

20. Apostrophe - An apostrophe is a direct address to the dead, to the absent or to personified object or idea apostrophe, too, is a kind of personification but in personification things are not addressed.

i. Oh death! come soon.

ii. Liberty! why are you so dear?

iii. Milton! Thou should’st be leaving at this hour.

iv. friend! I know not which way I must look.

v. solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in my face?

21. Pun – A play on words that are either identical in sound or very similar in sound but are sharply diverse in meaning.

                                  OR

A pun consists in the use of words in such a way that it is capable of more than one application, the object being to produce a ludicrous effect.

An ambassador lies abroad for the good of his country. (lives; tells lies)

 If a woman loses her husband she pines for a second.(sixtieth part of a minute; another)

21. Climax - This is a Greek word meaning a ladder. By this figure of speech so called the sense rises step-by-step to what is more and more important and impressive. The different ideas are arranged in ascending order of importance. The least important idea is placed first and the most important last.

For example;

i. I came, I saw, I conquered - Caesar.

ii. She sobs, groans and cries.

iii. He was abused, beaten and killed.

iv. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing, I dance for joy - Hazlitt.

v. We have petitioned, we have re- monstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne.

vi. As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant; I honour him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him - Shakespeare.

22. Bathos - Bathos is a Greek word

       meaning depth. It denotes an unintentional descent in literature when, straining to be pathetic or passionate or elevated, the writer overshoots the mark and drops into the trivial or the ridiculous.

 For example;

 Pope cites “the modest request of two absent lovers” in the contemporary poem:

 Ye Gods! annihilate but Space and Time, And make two lovers happy.

23. Anticlimax – anticlimax is sometimes used as an equivalent of bathos; but in a more useful application, “ anticlimax is non- derogatory, and denotes a writer’s deliberate drop from the serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly, in order to achieve a comic or satiric effect.

                                  OR

This is the opposite of climax, and signifies a ludicrous descent from the higher to the lower.

For example;

He lost his wife, his daughter his son, and his watch, all at one fell swoop.

A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome;

who in the course of one revolving moon

was lawyer, statesman, fiddler, and buffoon

                                                               – Dryden

Here, thou great Anna! whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea.

A better cavalier never mounted horse,

Or being mounted, ever got down again.