Lexical stylistic devices Irina Basalaeva

Metaphor This about me, a whisper on the fringe of a crowd…’. ("Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier, 1938) ‘It was a premonition, a blank step into the future’. Money burns a hole in the pocket. (T.Cap.)

Prolonged metaphor "Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune--without the words, And never stops at all, "And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. "I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me." (Emily Dickinson)

Personification ‘…the words going slowly to my head’. ("Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier, 1938) The moon seemed to smile at me from the sky. (A.C.Doyle) The long arm of the law will catch him in the end.

Metonomy ‘…and a violin playing a waltz in the distance’. ("Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier, 1938) “He ate not on silver, but on gold”. ( A. S. Griboedov) To earn one's bread. Synecdoche There were long legs all around. (a part is put for the whole)

Antonomasia "The Iron Lady" for Margaret Thatcher. The answer for this question can be given only by Mr. Know-it-all. Cambridge is England's Silicon Valley. Speaking names (Miss Sharp; Scrooge McDuck; Sponge Bob).

Irony ‘God damn my wife. She is an excellent woman. I wish she was in hell.’ (Maugham) He smiled the sweet smile of an alligator. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.“ (Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

Oxymoron "Ralph, if you're gonna be a phony, you might as well be a real phony.“ (Richard Yates, "Saying Goodbye to Sally.", 2002) Please, I didn't kill anyone. I'm an extreme pacifist. (Andrew J. West and Emily Deschanel in "The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken." Bones, 2009)

Zeugma "You held your breath and the door for me." (Alanis Morissette, "Head over Feet") "She arrived in a taxi and a flaming rage.“ (John Lyons, Semantics. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977) With tears in her eyes and a Gucci bag she appeared at the door of his apartment.

PUN (play upon words) "Look deep into our ryes." (slogan of Wigler's Bakery) "What food these morsels be!" (slogan of Heinz pickles, 1938) She was too beautiful for wards . (a ward sounds nearly the same as words)

Epithet ("Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier, 1938) Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. (E.Po "Raven") The punctual servant of all work, the sun. (Ch. Dickens) "I had a sharp, bitter taste ". ("Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier, 1938)

Hyperbole "I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far." (Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi") "I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor." (Raymond Chandler, "Pearls Are a Nuisance," 1939)

Understatement "This [double helix] structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.“ (J. Watson and F. Crick)

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