英语修辞格

Figures of Speech

Words used in their original meanings are used literally, while words used in extended meanings for the purpose of making comparisons or calling up pictures in the reader's or listensr's mind are used figuratively. In "a colorful garden" the word colorful is used in its literal sense, but in "a colorful life" and "a colorful career" the word is used in its figurative sense. Neither life nor career has any color; colorful here has a new extended or figurative meaning: exciting, interesting, and rich in variety. The word suggests a comparison between life or career and something that has different colors, like a garden, and because of this association the word is more impressive than a word used in its literal sense, such as interesting and exciting.

There are various ways of using words figuratively. They are called figures of speech. Among the most common of them are:

1. Simile It is a comparison between two distinctly different things and the comparison is indicated by the word as or like:

O my love's like a red, red rose.

- Robert Burns

That man can't be trusted. He's as slippery as an eel.

The old man's hair is as white as snow.

In the above three examples people and things of different categories are compared: a woman and a rose, a man and an eel, and hair and snow. But each pair have one similarity: loveliness, slipperiness and whiteness. The discrepancy between the two things compared makes their similarity all the more striking.

2. Metaphor It is the use of a word which originally denotes one thing to refer to another with a similar quality. It is also a comparison, but the comparison is implied, not expressed with the word as or like. If Robert Burns had written "O my love's a red, red rose" with the word like omitted, he would have used a metaphor instead of a simile. In the changed line, "my love" is also compared to a red rose, but there is no word to indicate the comparison; hence rose is a metaphor. Similarly, in sentences like "He is the soul of the team" and "Irrigation is the lifeblood of agriculture", soul and lifeblood are used metaphorically.

Metaphors are used not only after verb to be, and not only nouns can be used metaphorically. Study the following examples:

The picture of those poor people's lives was carved so sharply in his heart that he could never forget it.

There was a medieval magnificence about the big dining-hall.

The street faded into a country road with straggling houses by it.

There were a few lordly poplars before the house.

All his former joy was drowned in the embarrassment and confusion he was feeling at