Figures of Speech: The Small Moves That Make Language Impossible to Forget

A figure of speech is a word or phrase used outside its literal meaning to create emphasis, comparison, or a sharper image than a plain statement would. When someone says they are “so hungry they could eat a horse,” nobody thinks they intend to eat a horse. The literal claim is false. The emotional claim, that hunger has taken over every other thought, is completely true. That gap between what the words say and what they mean is where figures of speech live, and it is also why they get remembered while the literal version gets forgotten by lunchtime.

Writers reach for them instinctively because plain language describes a feeling while figurative language recreates it. A reader does not need to be told a breakup was painful if the sentence makes the ache land in their chest first. That is the actual job of a figure of speech: it hands the reader a shortcut straight to a feeling they already recognize.

This guide breaks down what figures of speech are, exactly how many there are (a more specific answer than most articles give), and more than 30 examples grouped so you can see how each one actually works, including a closer look at antithesis, one of the most misunderstood devices on this list.

Figures of Speech vs. Rhetorical Devices vs. Literary Devices

Figures of speech, rhetorical devices, and literary devices get used interchangeably online, but they answer three different questions. A figure of speech asks how a phrase bends literal meaning (metaphor, simile, hyperbole). A rhetorical device asks how language is arranged to persuade an audience (repetition, rhetorical questions, appeals to emotion). A literary device is the umbrella term covering every technique a writer uses to build a story or an argument, including both of the categories above plus things like foreshadowing and symbolism.

Figures of Speech What they are: specific ways of bending language to make it more expressive or memorable. Examples: metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification. Where you see them: everyday conversation, poems, novels, advertising.

Rhetorical Devices What they are: techniques used mainly in speeches, persuasion, or argument to move an audience. Examples: rhetorical questions, repetition (anaphora), appeals to logic or emotion. Where you see them: political speeches, debates, essays, courtroom arguments.

Literary Devices What they are: the umbrella term for every technique a writer uses to shape a story or an idea. Examples: plot structure, foreshadowing, symbolism, imagery, and figures of speech themselves. Where you see them: novels, short stories, plays, poems.

A quick way to hold onto the distinction: figures of speech are the individual tools in a writer’s kit, rhetorical devices are the strategy behind persuasion, and literary devices are the entire kit those tools live in.

What Are Figures of Speech?

A figure of speech is language that departs from its literal meaning on purpose, so the reader feels something a flat statement could never deliver. Saying “I’m very hungry” reports a fact. Saying “I could eat a horse” reports an experience, and experience is what sticks.

This is also why figures of speech show up everywhere, not just in novels and poetry. Every time someone exaggerates a story to a friend, calls a difficult week “a rollercoaster,” or softens bad news with a phrase like “letting someone go,” they are reaching for a figure of speech without naming it as one. These devices are not a writer’s special toolkit locked away from ordinary conversation. They are how people already talk when the plain version of a sentence would not carry enough weight.

How Many Figures of Speech Are There?

Most classification systems recognize between 20 and 30 core figures of speech, though the number climbs past 100 once every rare variation gets counted as its own category. The spread exists because figures of speech can be split by function (comparison, contrast, sound, repetition) or lumped by family, and different textbooks draw those lines in different places.

The practical answer is simpler than the academic one. A working writer needs to recognize somewhere between 12 and 30 of these to read and write with real control, which is why this guide covers 31: enough to handle almost anything you will encounter in fiction, nonfiction, or a query letter, without wading into the dozens of rare variants that mostly interest linguists rather than writers.

Types of Figures of Speech: Tropes and Schemes

Figures of speech split into two families based on what they actually change: tropes bend meaning, and schemes rearrange structure. A trope, like metaphor, irony, or hyperbole, takes a word or phrase and stretches what it means. A scheme, like alliteration or repetition, keeps the meaning intact and instead changes the arrangement or sound of the words themselves.

The distinction matters because it explains why some figures of speech feel emotionally loaded (tropes reshape meaning, so they carry interpretation) while others feel musical or rhythmic (schemes reshape sound and structure, so they carry pattern). A writer reaching for emotional weight usually wants a trope. A writer reaching for something that sounds good read aloud usually wants a scheme. Most strong sentences use one of each without the reader ever noticing the seam.

31 Figures of Speech With Examples

Here are the figures of speech worth actually knowing, the ones that show up constantly in real writing rather than only in a linguistics textbook. Each one gets a definition you can use on its own, plus an example that shows the device doing real work.

1. Metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that calls one thing by the name of another to imply they share a deeper quality. “Time is a thief” does not claim time literally steals anything, it claims time takes things from you the same way a thief does: without asking.
2. Simile A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using “like” or “as.” “Her smile was as bright as the sun” borrows the sun’s warmth to describe a feeling a plain description could not touch.
3. Hyperbole Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration used for effect rather than accuracy. “I’ve told you a million times” is obviously false and understood as false, which is exactly what makes the frustration behind it land.
4. Personification Personification gives human qualities to something non-human. “The wind whispered through the trees” makes weather feel like it has intention, which is why it shows up so often in scenes meant to feel eerie or alive.
5. Antithesis A closer look at antithesis, since it gets confused with oxymoron and paradox constantly. Antithesis places two contrasting ideas side by side in matching grammatical structure so the contrast itself becomes the point, as in “Speech is silver, but silence is golden.” Unlike an oxymoron, which crams a contradiction into a single phrase (“bittersweet”), antithesis needs two full, parallel halves to work. And unlike a paradox, which is a single statement that contradicts itself while revealing something true (“less is more”), antithesis builds its effect through balance, weighing two matched halves against each other rather than folding a contradiction into one idea. A second example: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” earns its power from that same mirrored structure, two halves built to weigh against each other.
6. Alliteration Alliteration repeats the initial consonant sound across nearby words. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” turns a plain sentence into something closer to a chant.
7. Onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia uses words that imitate the sound they describe. “The bacon sizzled in the pan” puts the sound of cooking directly into the sentence instead of describing it from a distance.
8. Oxymoron An oxymoron pairs two directly contradictory words in a single phrase. “Bittersweet memories” works because both halves are true at once, not because one cancels the other out.
9. Pun A pun is wordplay that exploits multiple meanings of a word or similar sounding words for humor. “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana” swaps the meaning of “flies” halfway through the sentence and gets a laugh out of the switch.
10. Apostrophe Apostrophe is a figure of speech where the speaker addresses someone or something absent, dead, or non-human as if it could respond. “O Death, where is thy sting?” treats an abstract concept like a listener in the room.
11. Euphemism A euphemism softens something harsh or uncomfortable by substituting gentler language. “Passed away” carries the same meaning as “died” but changes how much weight the reader has to absorb at once.
12. Synecdoche Synecdoche uses a part of something to stand in for the whole. “All hands on deck” means every crew member, not literally just their hands.
13. Metonymy Metonymy substitutes a word for something closely associated with it. “The crown will decide” uses an object (the crown) to represent an entire office (the monarchy).
14. Anaphora Anaphora repeats a word or phrase at the start of successive sentences or clauses to build momentum. Churchill’s “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds” turns repetition into rising intensity rather than redundancy.
15. Rhetorical Question A rhetorical question is asked to make a point, not to get an answer. “Isn’t it a bit too late to start now?” is really a statement of doubt dressed up as a question.
16. Irony Irony says one thing while meaning something close to the opposite, usually because reality has undercut the literal words. Calling a massive dog “Tiny” only works because everyone can see the joke in the mismatch.
17. Paradox A paradox is a statement that appears to contradict itself but holds a truth once you sit with it. “Less is more” only sounds wrong until you have actually experienced a cluttered room, an overwritten paragraph, or an over-explained joke.
18. Litotes Litotes is understatement created through negation, usually to soften or ironically downplay a positive statement. “Not bad” standing in for “genuinely excellent” is litotes doing quiet, deliberate work.
19. Allusion An allusion is a brief reference to a well-known person, event, or work, used to import meaning without spelling it out. Calling someone “a real Romeo” borrows an entire play’s worth of context in three words.
20. Chiasmus Chiasmus reverses word order across two parallel phrases, creating a mirrored structure. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” is both antithesis and chiasmus at once, which is part of why the line has survived as long as it has.
21. Climax Climax arranges a list of ideas in ascending order of importance, building toward the most significant point last. “I came, I saw, I conquered” gets more forceful with every clause because the stakes rise each time.
22. Anticlimax Anticlimax deliberately drops from something serious to something trivial, usually for comic or ironic effect. “He lost his family, his fortune, and his car keys” undercuts real tragedy with something small enough to puncture it on purpose.
23. Assonance Assonance repeats vowel sounds across nearby words. “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” leans on that repeated long A sound to make the line easy to remember and pleasant to say out loud.
24. Consonance Consonance repeats consonant sounds, usually at the end of words, rather than at the beginning. “The lumpy, bumpy road” uses that repeated closing sound to make the road feel as rough as it’s being described.
25. Zeugma Zeugma applies one word to two other words in two different senses within the same sentence. “She broke his car and his heart” uses “broke” literally once and emotionally once, in the same breath.
26. Tautology Tautology repeats an idea using different words for emphasis, even though the second half adds no new information. “Free gift” is tautological since a gift is free by definition, but the redundancy is what makes it feel emphatic in marketing copy.
27. Pleonasm Pleonasm uses more words than a sentence strictly needs, for emphasis or rhythm rather than efficiency. “I saw it with my own eyes” could simply be “I saw it,” but the extra words insist on the speaker’s certainty.
28. Anadiplosis Anadiplosis repeats the last word of one clause at the start of the next, chaining ideas together. “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering” builds a cause and effect chain purely through that repeated link word.
29. Epistrophe Epistrophe repeats a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses, the mirror image of anaphora. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” gets its rhythm from that repeated closing beat.
30. Polyptoton Polyptoton repeats a root word in different grammatical forms within the same sentence. “Choosy mothers choose Jif” turns a single root idea into both a description and an action.
31. Antithetical Pun Some figures of speech blend two categories at once, and this closing example does exactly that: “I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not so sure” is a pun built on the shape of antithesis, contradicting itself for a laugh instead of for insight.

Why Figures of Speech Matter in Writing

Figures of speech matter because a reader trusts a sentence that makes them feel something before it makes them understand something. A flat sentence asks a reader to take information on faith. A figurative one gives the reader an experience first, so the idea arrives already believed rather than argued for.

This lines up with how the brain actually processes language. Cognitive linguists have long pointed out that figurative language tends to activate more of the brain than literal phrasing does: a metaphor about a “cold” reception engages some of the same sensory processing as an actual cold room. A plain sentence gets read. A figurative one gets felt, which is a large part of why Shakespeare’s lines, King’s speeches, and the best song lyrics still get quoted generations later while the flat summary of the same idea gets forgotten within the hour.

For a writer, this has a practical consequence. Every time you’re deciding between a plain sentence and a figurative one, you’re really deciding whether you want the reader to agree with you or to feel the thing you’re describing alongside you. Query letters, opening chapters, and back cover copy all live or die on that second option, since nobody falls in love with a manuscript because its premise was accurately summarized.

FAQ: Figures of Speech