Categories of Figures of Speech
Scholars of classical Western rhetoric have divided figures of speech into two main categories: schemes and tropes. Schemes (from the Greek schēma, form or shape) are figures of speech that change the ordinary or expected pattern of words. For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from the Greek tropein, to turn) change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").
During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech. Henry Peacham, for example, in his The Garden of Eloquence (1577), enumerated 184 different figures of speech. Professor Robert DiYanni, in his book "Literature - Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay" wrote: "Rhetoricians have catalogued more than 250 different figures of speech, expressions or ways of using words in a nonliteral sense.".
For simplicity, this article divides the figures between schemes and tropes, but does not further sub-classify them (e.g., "Figures of Disorder"). Within each category, words are listed alphabetically. Most entries link to a page that provides greater detail and relevant examples, but a short definition is placed here for convenience. Some of those listed may be considered rhetorical devices, which are similar in many ways.
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Famous quotes containing the words figures of speech, categories of, categories, figures and/or speech:
“But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to
people they say Oh yes, they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“Kitsch ... is one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of “trashy,” sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the “cliché” in discourse.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“all the categories which we employ to describe conscious mental acts, such as ideas, purposes, resolutions, and so on, can be applied to ... these latent states.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to
people they say Oh yes, they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)