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Rhetorical Schemes and Tropes

Schemes

Parallelism: similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses (pg. 463)

Isocolon: similarity not only of structure but of length (464)

Antithesis: the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure (464)

Anastrophe: inversion of the natural or usual word order (466)

Parenthesis: insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactical flow of the sentence (467)

Apposition: placing side by side two co-ordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification of the first (468)

Ellipsis: deliberate omission of a word or of words which is readily implied by the context (469)

Asyndeton: deliberate omission of conjunctions between a series (469)

Polysyndeton: deliberate use of many conjunctions (470)

Alliteration: repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words (471)

Assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds, preceded and followed by different consonants, in the stressed syllables of adjacent words (472)

Anaphora: repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses (472)

Epistrophe: repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive clauses (473)

Epanalepsis: repetition at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of the clause (474)

Anadiplosis: repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause (475)

Climax: arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance (476)

Antimetabole: repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order (477)

Chiasmus: reversal of grammatical structures in successive clauses (but no repetition of words) (478)

Polyptoton: repetition of words derived from the same root (478)

Tropes

Metaphor: implied comparison between two things of unlike nature (479)

Simile: explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature (479)

Synecdoche: figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole (480)

Metonymy: substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is actually meant (481)

Antanaclasis: repetition of a word in two different senses (482)

Paronomasis: use of words alike in sound but different in meaning (482)

Syllepsis: use of a word understood differently in relation to two or more other words, which it modifies or governs (483)

Anthimeria: the substitution of one part of speech for another (484)

Periphrasis (antonomasis): substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name or of a proper name for a quality associated with the name ((485)

Personification (prosopesis): investing abstractions for inanimate objects with human qualities or abilities (485)

Hyperbole: the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect (486)

Litotes: deliberate use of understatement (487)

Rhetorical question: asking a question, not for the purpose of eliciting an answer but for the purpose of asserting or denying something obliquely (488)

Irony: use of a word in such a way as to convey a meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the word (489)

Onomatopoeia: use of words whose sound echoes the sense (490)

Oxymoron: the yoking of two terms which are ordinarily contradictory (491)

Paradox: an apparently contradictory statement that nevertheless contains a measure of truth (492)

From Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, Second Edition. New York, 1971. Edward Corbett.