Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

antithesis

(Encyclopedia)antithesis ăntĭthˈĭsĭs [key], a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves...

litotes

(Encyclopedia)litotes līˈtətēzˌ [key], figure of speech in which a statement is made by indicating the negative of its opposite, e.g., “not many” meaning “a few.” A form of irony, litotes is meant to e...

synecdoche

(Encyclopedia)synecdoche sĭnĕkˈdəkē [key], figure of speech, a species of metaphor, in which a part of a person or thing is used to designate the whole—thus, “The house was built by 40 hands” for “The ...

hyperbole

(Encyclopedia)hyperbole hīpûrˈbəlē [key], a figure of speech in which exceptional exaggeration is deliberately used for emphasis rather than deception. Andrew Marvell employed hyperbole throughout To His Coy M...

personification

(Encyclopedia)personification, figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstract ideas are endowed with human qualities, e.g., allegorical morality plays where characters include Good Deeds, Beauty, and Death...

simile

(Encyclopedia)simile sĭmˈəlē [key] [Lat.,=likeness], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which an object is explicitly compared to another object. Robert Burns's poem “A Red Red Rose” contains two straightfo...

irony

(Encyclopedia)irony, figure of speech in which what is stated is not what is meant. The user of irony assumes that his reader or listener understands the concealed meaning of his statement. Perhaps the simplest for...

metaphysical poets

(Encyclopedia)metaphysical poets, name given to a group of English lyric poets of the 17th cent. The term was first used by Samuel Johnson (1744). The hallmark of their poetry is the metaphysical conceit (a figure ...

Bruce, Lenny

(Encyclopedia)Bruce, Lenny, 1925–66, American comedian, b. Long Island, N.Y., as Leonard Alfred Schneider. Possessed of a cynical, surreal, and intensely comic view of the world, Bruce brutally satirized such sen...

metaphor

(Encyclopedia)metaphor [Gr.,=transfer], in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which one class of things is referred to as if it belonged to another class. Whereas a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states th...