27 figures of speech and examples

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Figure of Speech

Speech figures, which are frequently used in a text or during a speech, are used to create a certain effect and actually aim to tell something without expressing the real meaning of the word. Although these words or phrases are generally used in poetry to create a better discourse, they often appear in everyday speech as well. For example, we can use more poetic language to recommend a beautiful painting, or we can use different ways of speaking to make an idea more vivid. In general, figures of speech are used to make the language more attractive and to give a more literary discourse to speech or writing. We can say that in all speech figures, words are used far from their literal meanings and are used in a different way from their typical usage.

Types of Figures of Speech

Although Speech figures are a high-level grammar subject that includes dozens of different types of literary expression, we only focused on a few simple topics as we will explain this subject in a simpler way. We can tabulate the speech figures that we will process in this text as follows:

Simile	Personification	Understatement	Metonymy
Synecdoche	Euphemis	Oxymoron	Onomatopoeia

27 Figure of Speech Examples

1.I wish your future to be as bright as the sun in the sky. (Simile)

2.You have to stay away from that woman, she is hard as a nail. (Simile)

3.I want so much to be free as a bird. (Simile)

4.As much as I like to eat onions, onions don’t like me very much. (Personification)

5.Although I would love to work today, my will insists on not listening to me. (Personification)

6.He is not very successful in his classes. (Actually, he’s quite unsuccessful in his classes, but the author tries to make it clear that it doesn’t matter.) (Understatement)

7.The wind blew stronger than usual. (Actually, there was a storm serious enough to rip up the power poles, but the author ignored it.) (Understatement)

8.We call the poor people the “economically struggling” people, which is an important example of euphemism. (Euphemism)

9.Since killing someone is not a welcome term, we prefer “to sleep” instead of the word euthanasia. (Euphemism)

10.The cat was constantly meowing to us for food because it was so hungry, but we didn’t have enough cat food to give it. (Onomatopoeia)

11.Angela’s dog barked in horror as she threw the books she was holding onto the floor with a loud noise. (Onomatopoeia)

12.The wave of the sea did not go as far as my heart. (Hyperbole)

13.Can you hear the clicks coming from the roof? (Onomatopoeia)

14.The monkey ate the beans in his hand. (Onomatopoeia)

15.I could not sleep through my mother snort during the night. (Onomatopoeia)

16.The flowing waters of the waterfall took all my troubles. (Onomatopoeia)

17.The food in the cauldron was boiling scalding. (Onomatopoeia)

18.I don’t want to hear the buzz of the fly standing by my ear. (Onomatopoeia)

19.He suddenly exploded when he threw the ball into the thorns. (Onomatopoeia)