英语修辞例子

1.1 Alliteration

safe and sound

1.2 Consonance

rou gh and tou gh

1.3Assonance

f ai r and sq ua re

1.4 Rhyme

fit or fat

1.5 Onomatopoeia

The stream is murmuring through the woods.

2.1 Simile

The gossip is like a net that strangled her.

The news is like a dagger to his heart.

He has no more idea of money than a cow.

His voice sounded like a thunder in the hall.

The machine-gun was shooting down the enemy like a mower cutting down grass.

Habit is likened to a cable; Every day we weave a thread, and soon we cannot break it.

2.2 Metaphor

The night was pitch-black.

At last he felt a ray of hope.

The hallway was zebra-striped with darkness and moonlight.

Not all slim girls are paper tigers.

He was a walking encyclopedia.

Applications for jobs flooded the Employment Agency.

2.3 Metonymy

The kettle is boiling.

He must have been spoilt from the cradle.

Every government should attend to cleaning its own Augean stables.

Bacchus has drowned more than Neptune but has killed fewer than Mars.

The world is a stage.

The diamond department was the heart and center of the store.

2.4 Synecdoche

The gray hair should be respected.

The house was built by 40 hands.

The law arrived just in time to catch the armed robber.

George was one of the foes worthy of his steel.

There is a mixture of the tiger and the ape in the character of a Frenchman.

The Great Wall was made not only of stones and earth, but of the flesh and blood of millions of men.

2.5 Synesthesia

The birds sat upon a tree and poured forth their lily like voice.

Taste the music of Mozart.

Johnson‟s Baby Powder: the soft smell

The light is braying like an ass

What a noisy scarf it is!

Sweet Thames! Run softly, till I end my song.

2.6 Transferred Epithet

sleepless night

dizzy height

sweet voice

icy look

protesting chair

a hell of a workshop

2.7 Personification

The sun kissed the green fields.

The thirsty desert drank up the water.

The youth were singing, laughing and playing the music instrument.

The trees and flowers around them danced heartily as if touched by merry mood.

Time and tide wait for no man.

Ignominy, Want, Despair and Madness have, collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career.

2.8 Hyperbole

Her beauty made the bright world dim, and everything beside seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hour.

Only a wizard could remember how many times I answered the telephone that day.

I beg a thousand pardons.

Love you. You are the whole world to me, and the moon and the stars.

When she heard the bad news, a river of tears poured out.

2.9Pun

∙Then there was a man in the restaurant.

“You‟re not eating your fish,” the waitress said to him.

“Anything wrong with it?”

“Long time no sea.”

∙Try our sweet corn. You‟ll smile from ear to ear.

∙“Could I try on the trousers in the window?” asked the customer in the man‟ shop. “You can if you want, sir,” replied the salesman, “but we do have a

dressing-room.”