Accompanying another post on rhetorical schemes, here is one on tropes. Where schemes deal with sentences - clauses in parallel, etc. - tropes concern the artful deviation of words from their ordinary sense. In practice, the distinction between schemes and tropes can become artificial, as there is a natural symbiosis between word and syntax. Some figures (ie zeugma) have been classified variously as scheme and trope. There are also problems in talking about the 'ordinary' use of language. There are good arguments (see Owen Barfield's wonderful book Poetic Diction) that language in its normal state is metaphorically rich, and we have to make a special effort to reduce a word ro statement to carry single precise meanings: think of the work lawyers have to do to create documents that admit of only one interpretation - it suggests they might be working against the grain of the material of language.
Metaphor and Simile
Metaphor
Twisting a word from its usual sense to create another idea. Used to form striking comparisons between two unlike things to show something they still have in common. A metaphor can occur in various parts of speech, and it does not have to take the form a=b. There's a beautiful discussion of metaphor in the film Il Postino.
This book is a monument.
The sun blessed the bright sky. The sun shouted in the laughing sky.
That news just burns me up.
I stood in the lonely field [so-called transferred epithet, where the adjective describing me - lonely - is transferred to the field. Also an instance of Ruskin's pathetic fallacy, the fallacy being to suppose that inanimate things like fields have feeling (pathos) like loneliness.]
Simile
Also a comparison between two unlike things, made explicit by a word such as 'as' or 'like'
My love is like a red, red rose.
The silence settled like snow.
He entered the room as subtly as a steam train.
Part and whole
Synecdoche
Part stands for whole; genus or adjunct suggest main idea.
A village of three hundred souls. ['soul' is a part, standing for the whole person]
Keep your vehicle roadworthy [Vehicle stands - probably - for car, a specific kind of vehicle
: genus for species]
Give us this day our daily bread [Bread for food: species for genus]
Many hands make light work.
You did this for the oldest of motives - silver [the material 'silver' stands for what is made from it]
Metonymy
Virtually the same as synecdoche. An attribute or suggestive word is used to imply what is really meant.
Let's go and buy a bottle or two for dinner.
The top brass are meeting now.
He lives by his pen.
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
Puns
Other ages took puns more seriously than we do. Shakespeare's plays and other Renaissance dramas has a level of wordplay that can seem puzzling to a modern audience. One way of looking at a line like Hamlet's punning 'A little more than kin and less than kind' is that it contains metaphor at its most compressed - several meanings in just one word (kind implies a comparison with 'kinned' (family-related) and 'kind' meaning species).
Antanaclasis
Word repeated in two different senses.
I want to scotch the idea that all the Scotch like Scotch.
Let's hang around while they hang Danny.
We make the traveller's lot a lot easier.
Paronomasia
Use words that sound the same but have different meanings. this is the groan groan type of pun.
I wish my parents would leave me a loan.
If you try the high stile you might look silly.
Let's have the fool for pudding.
Syllepsis
One word (usually a verb) governs two or mroe other words, though it is understood differently in each case. See zeugma, from which it is practically indistinguishable.
I take my hat and my leave.
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade.
... Dost sometimes counsel take - and sometimes tea.
His speech raised a laugh or two but also some hackles.
Figures of Substitution
Anthimeria
Substitute one part of speech for another. Several examples in late Shakespeare.
The thunder would not peace at my bidding. (noun for verb)
Lord Angelo dukes it well.
Knee thy way into his mercy.
I am going in search of the great perhaps (adverb for noun)
He wants to do the impossible (adjective for noun)
The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she.
Periphrasis
Substitute a descriptive word or phrase for a name (eg a nickname); substitute a proper name for a quality associated with it.
Meet the mad jackal, captain of our village cricket team.
I am taught biology by the great fungus.
I like drawing, but I'm no Leonardo.
You'd need a Hercules to shift this lot.
Personification
Give abstract concepts or inanimate objects human qualities.
The ground is thirsty.
Smoke caressed the garden fence.
Fortune is cruel and arbitrary.
Apostrophe
Address to an absent person or personified abstraction: Death be not proud, Oh cruel fortune! etc.
Hyperbole
Substitute an over-the-top phrase for the real idea, to achieve emphasis.
There were millions of people at the party.
When he's angry, he makes the walls shake.
He's the King of the village hall ping-pong table.
Litotes
Opposite of hyperbole. Deliberate understatement, emphasising the point by opposite means. It's most common form is witht he negative.
That's no mean task.
I'm slightly puzzled as to why you burned the house down.
It would be rather helpful if you could throw me a rope to stop me from drowning.
I admit it's somewhat unusual to see a tree growing in someone's living room.
einstein was not unintelligent.
Rhetorical question (erotema)
Asking a question in order to make a point rather than to elicit an answer.
How many times do I have to tell you?
Isn't it odd that the murders only started after the new vicar was installed?
Irony
Using a word to signify the opposite of what it usually means. In its strong form it becomes sarcasm.
So you completely ignored the question - that was clever.
It's a privilege to be able to teach Wykehamists.
I can't wait to get the next gas bill.
Onomatopoeia
The sound of a word seems to underline its sense. Often combined with alliteration and assonance.
First march the heavy Mules, securely slow,
O'er hills, o'er Dales, o'er crags, o'er rocks they go
Jumping high o'er the shrubs of the rough ground,
Rattle the clatt'ring Cars, and the shockt Axles bound. (Pope, Iliad, 23:138-41)
Oxymoron
Joining together two words with different senses, to create a kind of self-contradiction.
Dry ice, conspicuously absent, deafening silence, cruel kindness, laborious leisure, the living dead
O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches.
Recommended Reading
Arthur Quinn and Barney R Quinn, Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase
Richard A Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
Online
Two handy lists:
Robert A Harris, A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices
University of Kentucky, Glossary of Rhetorical Terms
More comprehensive treatment:
Gideon Young, Silva Rhetoricae
