Question

What do you understand by figures of speech? Name five and illustrate their use.

Answer 1

Answer:

What are Figures of Speech?

A figure of speech is a word or phrase using figurative language—language that has other meaning than its normal definition. In other words, figures of speeches rely on implied or suggested meaning, rather than a dictionary definition. We express and develop them through hundreds of different rhetorical techniques, from specific types like metaphors and similes, to more general forms like sarcasm and slang.

Figures of speech make up a huge portion of the English language, making it more creative, more expressive, and just more interesting! Many have been around for hundreds of years—some even thousands—and more are added to our language essentially every day. This article will focus on a few key forms of figures of speech, but remember, the types are nearly endless!

Explanation:

III. Types of Figure of Speech

There are countless figures of speech in every language, and they fall into hundreds of categories. Here, though, is a short list of some of the most common types of figure of speech:

A. Metaphor

Many common figures of speech are metaphors. That is, they use words in a manner other than their literal meaning. However, metaphors use figurative language to make comparisons between unrelated things or ideas. The “peak of her career,” for example, is a metaphor, since a career is not a literal mountain with a peak, but the metaphor represents the idea of arriving at the highest point of one’s career.

B. Idiom

An idiom is a common phrase with a figurative meaning. Idioms are different from other figures of speech in that their figurative meanings are mostly known within a particular language, culture, or group of people. In fact, the English language alone has about 25,000 idioms. Some examples include “it’s raining cats and dogs” when it is raining hard, or “break a leg” when wishing someone good luck.

Example

This sentence uses an idiom to make it more interesting:

C. Proverb

A proverb is a short, commonplace saying that is universally understood in today’s language and used to express general truths. “Don’t cry over spilt milk” is a popular example. Most proverbs employ metaphors (e.g. the proverb about milk isn’t literally about milk).

Example

This example uses a proverb to emphasize the situation:

I know you think you’re going to sell all of those cookies, but don’t count your chickens before they hatch

D. Simile

A simile is a very common figure of speech that uses the words “like” and “as” to compare two things that are not related by definition. For example, “he is as tall as a mountain,” doesn’t mean he was actually 1,000 feet tall, it just means he was really tall.

Example

This example uses a simile for comparison:

The internet is like a window to the world—you can learn about everything online!

E. Oxymoron

An oxymoron is when you use two words together that have contradictory meanings. Some common examples include small crowd, definitely possible, old news, little giant, and so on.

F. Metonym

A metonym is a word or phrase that is used to represent something related to bigger meaning. For example, fleets are sometimes described as being “thirty sails strong,” meaning thirty (curiously, this metonym survives in some places, even when the ships in question are not sail-powered!) Similarly, the crew on board those ships may be described as “hands” rather than people.

G. Irony

Irony is when a word or phrase’s literal meaning is the opposite of its figurative meaning. Many times (but not always), irony is expressed with sarcasm (see Related Terms). For example, maybe you eat a really bad cookie, and then say “Wow, that was the best cookie I ever had”—of course, what you really mean is that it’s the worst cookie you ever had, but being ironic actually emphasizes just how bad it was!

Answer 2

The figure of speech is a word or phrase that gives a sentence an indirect meaning in comparison to a direct sentence that gives its literal meaning. For example, he was tall as a tree.

The five types of figures of speech are given below:

1. Metaphor: A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things without using a comparison word. For example, Time is money.
2. Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using a comparison word like as, like, such as, etc.
3. Personification: Personification gives human characteristics to an inanimate object.
4. Oxymoron: It employs the use of two contrasting words like bittersweet.
5. Irony: The actual meaning of the sentence differs from the apparent meaning.