1. Discovering Literary Devices 2
Personification
Hyperbole
Idiom
Pun
Onomatopoeia
Oxymoron
Repetition
Imagery

2. Simile and Metaphor
Simile – direct comparison between two unlike objects using like or as.
Example: Paul Bunyan is as big as a mountain.
Metaphor – a figure of speech in which something is described as though it is something else. Unlike a simile, a metaphor does not contain like or as.
Example: Paul Bunyan is a
mountain of a man.

3. -Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
Extended Metaphor
A figure of speech that compares two essentially unlike things at some length.
Example:
Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won…
-Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
In this poem, President Lincoln is compared to the captain of a ship, and the ship is a metaphor for the U.S.

4. Personification
The giving of human qualities to an animal, object, or idea.
Example: Winter trees are starving, lacking leaves of spring.

5. Onomatopoeia The use of words whose sounds suggests their meaning.
Example: The boom of thunder woke me from my nap.

6. Hyperbole
A figure of speech in which the truth is exaggerated for emphasis or for humorous effect.
Example: He runs so fast he could catch a bullet.

7. Idiom
Phrases that have nothing to do with the meaning of the whole group of words together as a whole.
Examples:
A Dime A Dozen: Anything that is common and easy to get.
A Leopard Can't Change His Spots: You cannot change who you are. Finding Your Feet:  To become more comfortable in whatever you are doing
Cliché - An expression, such as “turn over a new leaf,” that has been used and reused so many times that it has lost its expressive power.

8. Pun
A play on words that uses the similarity in sound between two words with distinctly different meanings.

9. Oxymoron
Figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms.
Examples: icy hot; jumbo shrimp; bittersweet

10. Repetition
A technique in which a sound, word, phrase, or line is repeated for effect or emphasis.
Example:
In my sleep,
I dream
I believe
I mourn

11. Imagery
Consists of words and phrases that appeal to readers’ five senses.
Example: Soft snow fall upon the waiting roofs. The fluffy flakes create a mound of white powder…

12. Symbol
A person, a place, an object, or an action that stands for something beyond itself. Example: A single white dove flew above the warring country, lost in its path.