Figures of speech: what they are, the 4 types and 40 figures with examples

Figures of speech, also known as rhetorical devices or stylistic devices, are techniques that play with figurative meaning, sentence construction or the sound of words to make a message more expressive, creative or memorable. They fall into four groups: figures of words (such as the metaphor), figures of thought (such as irony), figures of syntax (such as ellipsis) and figures of sound (such as alliteration).

They are not exclusive to poetry, nor are they a grammar “mistake”: they show up in conversations, songs, ads and social media posts. When someone says they are “starving”, for example, they are using a hyperbole, a deliberate exaggeration for emphasis.

Below, we explain the concept and show the 40 main figures of speech with examples, the differences between the most similar ones, how to spot them in a text, exercises with an answer key and how to use them in communication and sales.

What are figures of speech?

In practice, figures of speech work as expression shortcuts: instead of explaining something in a long, literal way, they create an image, a rhythm or a contrast that the reader grasps right away. Saying that someone has “a heart of stone” conveys that person’s coldness better than a technical description.

That is why they appear both in literature and in everyday life, in expressions such as “break the ice”, “raining cats and dogs” and “the leg of the table”. Being able to recognize them helps you interpret texts and write better, since good use of this resource makes all the difference in any piece of writing.

Denotation and connotation: the basis of figures of speech

Denotation is the literal meaning of a word, the one found in the dictionary; connotation is the figurative meaning, which depends on context. Most figures of speech work with connotation.

• Denotation: “The vase fell and chipped the stone on the sidewalk.” (stone in its literal sense)
• Connotation: “She has a heart of stone.” (stone as a synonym for coldness)

Not every figure depends on figurative meaning: figures of syntax change the structure of the sentence, and figures of sound play with the sonority of words.

What are the types of figures of speech?

Figures of speech are classified into four types: figures of words (or semantic figures), figures of thought, figures of syntax (or construction) and figures of sound (or harmony). The table summarizes what each group does and which figures belong to it.

Grammar and rhetoric books do not always agree on the group of some figures (allegory and apostrophe, for example, change places depending on the author). What matters most is understanding the effect of each one. This guide presents 40 figures: 39 with their own section and synecdoche, explained together with metonymy.

Figures of words

Figures of words, or semantic figures, use a term with a meaning different from the usual one to make communication more expressive. They are:

Metaphor

A metaphor is an implicit comparison: it attributes to one thing the characteristics of another, without connectors such as “like” or “as”.

• Example: “All the world’s a stage.” (William Shakespeare, As You Like It)
• Example: “The stepmother had a heart of stone.”
• Example: “Jane is a flower.”

Nobody thinks the heart is made of stone: the metaphor conveys that the stepmother is insensitive. It is one of the most used figures in everyday life, often without us noticing.

Simile

A simile brings two elements together explicitly, with connectors such as “like”, “as” or “just as”.

• Example: “Her eyes were bright as emeralds.”

When the comparison is extended to explain an idea through another, better-known one, it is also called an analogy, as in “just as a plant needs water to grow, people need to eat well”.

Metonymy

Metonymy replaces a term with another that has a relationship of proximity with it, such as the author for the work, the container for the content or the brand for the product.

• Example: “John ate three plates of pasta.” (the content, not the plates)
• Example: “I love reading Shakespeare.” (the author’s works)

When the relationship is part for whole, singular for plural or species for genus, it is also called synecdoche, as in “All hands on deck” (people) or “Earning your daily bread” (food).

Catachresis

Catachresis is the use of a word outside its original meaning because there is no more specific term.

• Example: “The leg of the table is broken.”
• Example: “The neck of the bottle is cracked.”

Over time, these expressions become part of the language and nobody notices the figure anymore.

Synesthesia

Synesthesia mixes sensations perceived by different senses, such as touch, sight, smell and taste.

• Example: “The sweet smell of my childhood garden.” (smell and taste)
• Example: “He gave her a cold look.” (sight and touch)

Periphrasis

Periphrasis replaces a word with an expression that identifies it by its characteristics.

• Example: “The king of the jungle was sleeping.” (the lion)
• Example: “The Big Apple welcomed thousands of tourists.” (New York)

Antonomasia

Antonomasia is a type of periphrasis in which a person is called by a nickname or a striking characteristic.

• Example: “The Bard wrote Hamlet.” (Shakespeare)
• Example: “The King of Pop performed in Los Angeles.” (Michael Jackson)

Hypallage

Hypallage (also called transferred epithet) attributes to one thing a characteristic that belongs to another element of the same sentence.

• Example: “He smoked a thoughtful cigarette.” (the one who was thoughtful was he, not the cigarette)
• Example: “She spent a sleepless night.” (the person is sleepless, not the night)

Figures of thought

Figures of thought work with the combination of ideas and the meaning of what is said, whether to exaggerate, soften, contrast or ironize. They are:

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is an intentional exaggeration to emphasize an idea.

• Example: “I’m starving to death.”
• Example: “I’ve told you that a million times.”

Nobody is really dying: the exaggeration only reinforces the message. It is widely used in speech and advertising, which is why it requires care in sales copy.

Euphemism

Euphemism softens an unpleasant, sad or shocking idea.

• Example: “My grandfather passed away.” (died)
• Example: “He was economical with the truth.” (lied)

Dysphemism

Dysphemism is the opposite of euphemism: it uses a harsher, ruder or more derogatory expression in place of a neutral one.

• Example: “He kicked the bucket.” (died)

Litotes

Litotes states something by denying its opposite, which softens the message. It is considered the opposite of hyperbole.

• Example: “That blouse is not cheap.” (it is expensive)
• Example: “He is no fool.” (he is smart)

Irony

Irony says the opposite of what is meant, with critical or humorous intent, and depends on context to be understood.

• Example: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
• Example: “Great, it rained right on the day of the picnic.”

When irony is more aggressive and meant to hurt, it is called sarcasm.

Personification

Personification attributes human characteristics, actions or feelings to objects, animals or ideas.

• Example: “The morning woke up happy.”
• Example: “The wind whispered secrets through the window.”

Antithesis

Antithesis brings together words or ideas with opposite meanings to reinforce a contrast.

• Example: “John and Mary had a love-hate relationship.”
• Example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Paradox or oxymoron

A paradox joins ideas that contradict each other in a single statement, creating a meaning that seems impossible but makes you think.

• Example: “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)
• Example: “She felt a crowded loneliness.”

When the contradiction is in two words side by side, as in “deafening silence”, this paradox is also called an oxymoron.

Gradation

Gradation presents ideas in sequence, in ascending (climax) or descending (anticlimax) order.

• Example: “First calm, then irritated, finally furious.” (climax)
• Example: “He was a giant, then an ordinary man, and then almost nothing.” (anticlimax)

Apostrophe

Apostrophe is a direct address to someone or something, real or imaginary, present or absent, for emphasis.

• Example: “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done” (Walt Whitman)

Allusion

Allusion refers to a well-known person, work, event or character to reinforce an idea.

• Example: “Our love was like that of Romeo and Juliet.”

Mentioning Shakespeare’s characters helps the reader grasp the size of the passion without having to describe it.

Allegory

Allegory is a sequence of metaphors that builds a symbolic meaning throughout an entire text.

• Example: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners who only see shadows represent people trapped by appearances, and the exit from the cave represents the path to knowledge.

Fables and parables are also classic allegories. On a smaller scale, an extended metaphor, such as “Love is a rollercoaster: it climbs at full speed and suddenly plunges into curves that take your breath away”, gives an idea of the device. Symbols, such as the white dove representing peace, often appear in allegories.

Aposiopesis

Aposiopesis interrupts a sentence on purpose, leaving the rest implied for the reader.

• Example: “If I tell you what I saw at that party…”

Figures of syntax or construction

Figures of syntax alter the grammatical structure of the sentence, through omission, repetition or inversion of terms, to add emphasis or rhythm. They are:

Ellipsis

Ellipsis omits a term that is easy to identify from context.

• Example: “On the table, only a book.” (there was)
• Example: “Hope you like it.” (I)

Zeugma

Zeugma, as defined here, is a type of ellipsis in which a term already used earlier in the sentence, usually a verb, is omitted.

• Example: “Paul went by bike; I, on skates.” (went)

The comma after “I” marks the place of the omitted verb. The device avoids repetition and makes the sentence leaner.

Hyperbaton

Hyperbaton inverts the direct order of the sentence (subject, verb and complements) to highlight a term.

• Example: “Beautiful is the sea at dawn.” (example created for this text)

In direct order, it would be: “The sea at dawn is beautiful”.

Anastrophe

Anastrophe is a lighter inversion, in which the modifying term comes before the modified one.

• Example: “Of the beach the waves arrived slowly.” (The waves of the beach arrived slowly.)

Polysyndeton

Polysyndeton repeats conjunctions, such as “and”, “nor” and “or”, to create rhythm or a sense of accumulation.

• Example: “The children ran, and jumped, and shouted, and laughed.”

Asyndeton

Asyndeton is the opposite of polysyndeton: it omits conjunctions between terms or clauses.

• Example: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” (a phrase attributed to Julius Caesar)
• Example: “Ben bought chicken for lunch, fish for dinner.”

Anacoluthon

Anacoluthon is a break in the structure of the sentence: a term is left hanging, with no clear syntactic function.

• Example: “Those who lie, you can’t trust them.”

Pleonasm

Pleonasm repeats an idea intentionally to reinforce it.

• Example: “I saw it with my own eyes.”
• Example: “I heard it with my own ears.”

When the repetition has no expressive function, as in “return back”, it becomes a language vice.

Syllepsis

Syllepsis is agreement made with the idea rather than with the written word. In English it shows up mainly in agreement of number and person, and in pronouns that follow meaning, such as the “she” used for a ship.

• syllepsis of gender (pronoun): “The ship left port at dawn, and she cut smoothly through the waves.” (agrees with the idea of a vessel treated as feminine);
• syllepsis of number: “The team arrived early and then they went to the room.” (agrees with “the players”);
• syllepsis of person: “We Brazilians love football.” (agrees with “we”).

Anaphora

Anaphora repeats one or more words at the beginning of successive sentences or lines.

• Example: “This royal throne of kings, this scept’red isle, / This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars” (William Shakespeare, Richard II)

Epistrophe

Epistrophe repeats one or more words at the end of successive sentences or lines.

• Example: “I looked for you in the street, in the square, in the city. I waited for you in the rain, in the cold, in the city.”
• Example: “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…” (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address)

Anadiplosis

Anadiplosis repeats the last word of a sentence or line at the beginning of the next sentence or line.

• Example: “She gave me a smile, a smile I never forgot.”

Chiasmus

Chiasmus repeats terms in crossed order (A, B, B, A), creating a mirror effect.

• Example: “Eat to live, and not live to eat.”

Epizeuxis

Epizeuxis repeats the same word in sequence, with nothing in between, to add intensity.

• Example: “Run, run, run, the bus is leaving!”

Figures of sound or harmony

Figures of sound play with the sonority of words and are widely used in poems, songs, slogans and tongue twisters. They are:

Alliteration

Alliteration repeats nearby consonant sounds.

• Example: “The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, / The furrow followed free” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
• Example: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” (traditional tongue twister)

Assonance

Assonance repeats nearby vowel sounds.

• Example: “The light of the night shone bright on the white kite.” (repetition of the “i” sound; example created for this text)

Paronomasia

Paronomasia brings together words that sound alike but have different meanings.

• Example: “The doctor’s patience tested his patients.”
• Example: “The council ignored the counsel of the experts.”

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates a sound or noise.

• Example: “The tick-tock of the clock wouldn’t let me sleep.”
• Example: “Clip-clop, clip-clop, here came the horse.”

The difference between similar figures of speech

Some figures of speech are often confused because they have similar effects. The table shows how to tell the main ones apart:

Figures of speech x language vices

Figures of speech are intentional deviations that give expressiveness to a text; language vices are unintentional deviations that hurt clarity. The most common vices are:

• ambiguity or amphiboly: unintentional double meaning, as in “Carlos told Antonio that his mother had arrived” (whose mother?);
• vicious pleonasm: repetition without function, such as “return back” or “free gift”;
• cacophony: an unpleasant or ridiculous sound where words meet, as in “the shrill screech of the scratched scissors”;
• echo: repetition of identical sounds at the end of words, as in “the solution to the question of the nation”;
• barbarism: an error of spelling, pronunciation or meaning, such as “nucular” instead of “nuclear”;
• solecism: a syntax error, such as “She don’t like it” (instead of “She doesn’t like it”).

Ambiguity, however, can be used on purpose, as in jokes and ads with a double meaning. In those cases, it stops being a vice and becomes an expressive resource. A good text editor helps you catch repetitions and vices during revision.

How to identify figures of speech in a text

To identify a figure of speech, check whether the sentence departs from the literal meaning, the usual order or the usual sound, and work out what effect that deviation creates. In practice, follow these steps:

1. Read the sentence aloud and check whether it makes sense in its literal meaning.
2. If it does not, look for words used in a figurative sense (figures of words and of thought).
3. See whether there is exaggeration, softening, contrast or irony.
4. Look at the structure: are there omitted, repeated or out-of-order terms? (figures of syntax)
5. Pay attention to the sounds: is there repetition of consonants, vowels or similar-sounding words? (figures of sound)
6. Ask what effect is intended (emphasis, humor, criticism, rhythm) and confirm the figure.

A single sentence can contain more than one figure at once. The line “Her silence was a deafening scream” (created for this text), for example, has a metaphor and an oxymoron.

Figures of speech exercises with answer key

To reinforce the content, identify the main figure of speech in each sentence. The commented answers come right after the exercises.

1. “I waited an eternity in the bank line.”
2. “My heart is a garden after the rain.”
3. “She ran fast as lightning.”
4. “The wind sang in the cracks of the window.”
5. “Between laughter and tears, she finished the course.”
6. “I drank two glasses of juice before leaving.”
7. “In the sky, not a single cloud.”
8. “He woke up, had coffee, ran out.”
9. “Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.”
10. “She felt a joyful sadness as she said goodbye.”

Commented answer key

1. Hyperbole. “An eternity” is a deliberate exaggeration to stress that the wait was long.
2. Metaphor. The heart is likened to a garden without a connector, to suggest relief and renewal.
3. Simile. The resemblance to lightning is made explicitly, with the connector “as”.
4. Personification. Singing is a human action attributed to the wind.
5. Antithesis. “Laughter” and “tears” are opposite ideas brought together to reinforce the contrast.
6. Metonymy. “Glasses” stands in for the content, the juice: it is the relationship of container for content.
7. Ellipsis. The words “there was” were omitted and are easy to recover from context.
8. Asyndeton. The actions appear in sequence, without connectors such as “and”.
9. Alliteration. The consonant sound “r” repeats in almost every word.
10. Paradox (oxymoron). “Joyful” and “sadness” contradict each other side by side and create a meaning that makes you think.

Figures of speech in communication and sales

Outside school and literature, figures of speech help explain complex ideas, create an emotional connection and make a message easier to remember. That is why they appear in speeches, ads, classes and posts.

In the communication of anyone who produces content, a well-chosen metaphor turns a technical concept into something concrete, and an analogy helps the audience understand a hard subject, such as new technologies, and interact more with the content. In blog posts, videos and social media, this resource increases interaction with the audience and strengthens arguments, and it also adds personality to email marketing messages.

When it comes to selling, figures of speech help show the transformation a product offers and persuade more naturally, as long as the text remains clear and honest.

How to use figures of speech in copy and sales pages

In sales texts, figures of speech work best when they reinforce a real benefit and make the message clearer, not when they merely decorate the text. Here is how to use the main ones:

Hyperbole deserves extra attention: obvious exaggerations, such as “a sea of ideas”, work well, but promises like “get rich in a week” can mislead consumers and damage trust. These devices fit naturally on sales pages and landing pages, where every line has to earn the reader’s attention.

Figures of speech in video scripts and social media

In videos and posts, figures of speech help grab attention in the first few seconds and make the message easier to remember and share. Some practical applications:

• hooks with antithesis or paradox, such as “The less you post, the more you grow? It depends.”;
• metaphors in titles and covers, which create curiosity without giving everything away;
• onomatopoeia in captions and short videos, which add rhythm and humor;
• personification in stories that follow the hero’s journey, such as “the spreadsheet that kept complaining about you”;
• anaphora in opening and closing lines, to create a verbal signature;
• gradation to lead the narrative up to the call to action.

When putting together a video script, choose one or two figures per segment: too many confuse the message. For more on turning followers into customers, see how social media sales work.

Use figures of speech to your advantage

Figures of speech make writing more creative, expressive and memorable, whether in an essay, a poem or a sales page. Knowing each one helps you interpret what you read better and choose the right device for what you want to say.

Want to bring these techniques to your sales texts? Learn how to sell digital products, create an ebook or make your first online sale, and, on Hotmart, the all-in-one platform for creators who want to create, sell and scale digital products, create your free account to turn what you know into a product. You can also see how to promote a product online.