tropes

Tropes are figures of speech that help to create better writing. Below are nine such tropes taken from Rhetoric Online

1. Metaphor--finding a trait shared by the subject at hand (tenor) with another dissimilar subject (vehicle):

• But love is a durable fire / In the mind ever burning--Sir Walter Raleigh
• I don't want to go down in flames on the final examination.
• Vale of tears.
• "Hold a mirror up to nature":

  Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as a 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.--Hamlet, Shakespeare

• "The winter of our discontent":

  Now is the winter of our discontent

  Made Glorious summer my this son of York;

  And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house

  In the deep bosom of the ocean buried--Richard II, Shakespeare

  Dead metaphor: the branch of an organization

  Mixed metaphor: those vipers stabbed us in the back.

2. Simile--making a metaphorical statement using like, as, or than:

• My love is like a red, red rose.
• He had a posture like a question mark.
• How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child--King Lear, Shakespeare
• Like an arrow, the prosecutor went to the point.
• Younger than springtime are you

Homeric (epic) simile--Using the "As..., so...." pattern, with the as followed by a lengthy, elaborated vehicle; and the so followed by a somewhat brief tenor. 

As a man will bury his glowing brand in black ashes, / off on a lonely farmstead, no neighbors near, / to keep a spark alive--no need to kindle fire / from somewhere else--so great Odysseus buried / himself in leaves and Athena showered sleep / upon his eyes...."--Homer, The Odyssey (Tr. Fagles)

3. Synecdoche--substituting a part for a whole, or the whole for the part:

• All hands on deck.
• This was the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--Marlowe
• Take thy face hence.--Macbeth
• I should have been a pair of ragged claws, / Scuttling across the floor of silent seas--T. S. Eliot
• USM defeated Praire.

Metonymy--removing a word and putting an associated word in its place.  (Note: synecdoche is a subspecies of metonymy):

• The pen is mightier than the sword.
• The press for journalism
• The bottle for alcoholic drink
• Mozart for Mozart's music
• The Oval Office for the US Presidency

4. Syllepsis--a type of pun, playing on different meanings of a word.

Typically it is a verb carrying two meanings followed by two direct objects.   The verb appears only once, but, as the sentence evolves, the reader sees that the verb serves double duty, with "meaning A" agreeing with first direct object and "meaning B" agreeing with the second:

• He lost his hat and his temper.
• The frustrated professor leaned upon his podium and upon stale jokes as he tried to get his students' attention.
• Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey / Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.--Alexander Pope

5. Anthimeria--making a noun into a verb, or a preposition into an adjective, or a verb into a noun, or...

• He slimed me!--Bill Murray's character in Ghostbusters
• this beneath world--Shakespeare
• I'll unhair thy head.--A&C, Shakespeare
• Such stuff as madmen / Tongue, and brain not.--Cym. Shakespeare
• I am going in search of the great perhaps.--Rabelais
• The mutable, rank-scented many--T&C, Shakespeare
• he sang his didn't he danced his did--Cummings

6. Periphrasis--substituting of one or more descriptive words for a proper name, or the substituting of a proper name for obvious associations with the name.

• The Splendid Splinter hit two more round-trippers today.
• She may not have been a Penelope, but she was not as unfaithful as the gossips made her out to be.
• She's got Bette Davis eyes.--popular song lyric

Note: A second meaning of periphrasis is roundabout expression: "finny tribe" for fish, "fire water" for whiskey.

7. Personification--comparing an idea, object, or animal to a person.

• Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows--Sir Philip Sidney
• The very stones cry out for revenge,
• The ground thirsts for rain.

8. Litotes (LIE-tu-tez)--denying the contrary; two negatives yielding a positive (if not always a fully enthusiastic positive).  In Litotes more is understood than is said.

• A period of silence from you would now be not unwelcome.
• Bowing is a not uncommon practice in the dojo.
• His actions were viewed as not unkind.
• This result is not unusual.
• A citizen of no mean city.

Note: Litotes and the double negative are different kinds of expression.   A double negative--an instance of nonstandard English--uses two negative to make a negative statement. 

• I'm not feeling that way no more.
• I don't know nothin'.

9. Oxymoron--condensing a paradox into two juxtaposed words.

Ideal

• darkness visible
• screaming silence
• bittersweet
• living death

Non-ideal:

• act natural
• pretty ugly
• hard water

Humorous:

• Ivy League football
• military intelligence
• Microsoft Works

This page reprinted from Rhetoric Online. It shall not be copied in any way without giving due credit to that page.

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