Rhetorical Device Examples
antimetabole
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country
allusion
But they tortured and burned you/ They beat you and they tied you/ They left you cold and breathing/ For love they crucified you.... This shepherd young and mild
Chiasmus
By the day he frolic, and the dance by night
Apostrophe
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel. Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.
Assonance
From the molten-golden notes...
Assonance
He hung a grunting weight
Chiasmus
He led bravely, and we bravely followed
Aposiopesis
I will have such revenges on you both that all the world shall-I will do things-What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be the terrors of the earth!
allusion
If you love a lot, you'll lie a lot/ Guess they did in Camelot
anaphora
Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!
Apposition
Mininver Ceevy, child of scorn, grew lean while he assailed the seasons.
Climax
Nothing has been left undone to cripple their minds, debase their moral stature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind
antimetabole
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
hyperbole
People moved slowly then. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County
Apostrophe
Roll on, thou dark and deep blue ocean
allusion
Santha Rama Rau entitled her auto biographical story about the painful memory of a teacher who replaced her name with an English name "By Any Other Name"
Apostrophe
Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art!
litotes
The headache John developed did little to improve his mood
Assonance
The lady waits in the place of her favorite angel
antimetabole
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think
hyperbole
There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fishhook with.
Apposition
There was snow in the air, buoyant motes, play things that seethed and floated like the toy flakes inside a crystal.
Apposition
This is a valley of ashes-a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat
antimetabole
We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, the rock was landed on us.
anaphora
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans.
Aposiopesis
Well, I lay if if I get ahold of you I'll--
Aposiopesis
You know what they say: birds of a feather...
litotes
war is no picnic