高英修辞笔记

Simile 明喻

Definition: a direct comparison between two or more unlike things; normally introduced by like or as

My heart is like a singing bird.

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

Metaphor 暗喻

Definition: a figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another.

He has a heart of stone.

College is a comma of a sentence of life.

Ideology is a drug; no matter how much it is exposed by experience, the

craving for it still persists.

Personification 拟人

Definition: a figure of speech in which a thing, quality, or idea is represented as a person

The baby crocodile thought hard. At last he had a good idea.

In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers.

Over on the east side the ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores.

(O. Henry: The Last Leaf)

Transferred Epithet 移就

Definition: a figure of speech in which the epithet is transferred from the appropriate noun to modify another to which it does not really belong

He behaved with guilty caution and rather enjoyed stealing a march on Doctor

Ed.

Sometimes they threw (him) bits of food, and got scant thanks; sometimes a

mischievous pebble, and a shower of stones and abuses.

Metonymy 转喻

Definition: the name of something is used to represent a more general but closely related thing

The kettle is boiling.

This film star has a large wardrobe.

We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than

Miss Emily had ever been.

Synecdoche 提喻

More hands are needed at harvest time.

Nowadays more and more people have a liking for cotton.

Hyperbole 夸张

Definition: a figure of speech based on extravagant exaggeration.

Bob loves running risks, and he once dived from the overhanging cliff of ten thousand feet high into the sea.

Litotes (Understatement) 含蓄陈述/间接肯定法

Definition: a figure of speech in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of

As lean was his horse as is a rake,

And he was not right fat, I undertake.

(Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales)

By age thirty, my father was a county sheriff, no mean job in those days, and his territory was wide ranging.

Paradox 隽语/似是而非

Definition: Apparently self-contradictory statement, the underlying meaning of which is revealed only by careful scrutiny.

More haste, less speed.

He who praises everybody praises nobody.

Parallelism 平行/排比

It consists of phrases or sentences of similar construction and meaning placed side by side, balancing each other.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.

Junior considered the playground his own, and the schoolchildren coveted his

freedom to sleep late, go home for lunch, and dominate the playground after school.

But this beautiful image of the earth, now repeatedly thrust before us in

photographs, posters, and advertisements, is misleading.

Antithesis 对照

Definition: Contrast of ideas expressed by parallelism of strongly contrasted words.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman takes twenty minutes to make a fool of him .

The little black girl had eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Alliteration 头韵

Definition：the commencement of two or more words of a word group with the same letter.

Don’t speak humming and hawing, but speak out.

Love’s Labour’s Lost. (by Shakespeare)

The house smelled of dust and disuse --- a close, dank smell.

The big house in the trees looked safe and sturdy.

Anaphora 首语重复法

Children are a comfort, children are amusing, and children are sometimes a nuisance. Chiasmus 交错法

Definition: a device that consists of two balanced statements, the second of which reverses the order of the words in the first, with or without a repetition of words.

Eat to live, and not live to eat. (Benjamin Franklin)

Irony 讽刺/反语

Definition: a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that