A narrative in which abstract ideas figure as circumstances or persons, usually to enforce a moral truth.

Repetition of the same sound, usually intitial, in two or more words. This term normally applies to consonants and accented intitial vowels.

Repetition of a word, usually at the beginning of successive clauses or phrases, for emphasis or for pathetic effect. This figure is often accompanied by asyndeton and ellipsis.

An abrupt failure to complete a sentence, for rhetorical effect.

Address of an absent person or an abstraction, usually for pathetic effect.

The close recurrence of similar sounds, usually used of vowels sounds.

Omission of conjunctions in a closely related series.

(adj., chiastic) Arrangement of words, usually adjectives and nouns, in the pattern ABBA.

An apparent digression describing a place, connected at the end of the description to the main narrative by hic or huc,

Omission of one or more words necessary to the sense.

The running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so that closely related words fall in different lines.

Use of two nouns connected by a conjunction with the meaning of one modified noun.

Reversal of chronological order in order to put the more important idea first.

Exaggeration for effect,

Arrangement of pairs of words so that one word of each pair is between the words of the other (ABAB). This arrangement normally emphasizes the colse association of the pairs.

The use, clearly intentional or apparently unintentional (dramatic irony), of words with a meaning contrary to the situation.

An understatement for emphasis, usually an assertion of something by denying the opposite.

An implied comparison, that is, the use of a word or words suggesting a likeness between what is actually being described and something else.

Use of one noun in place of another closely related noun, to avoid common or prosaic words.

(adj., onomatopoeic or onomatopoetic) Use of words whose, sound suggests the sense.

(paradox) The use of apparently contradictory words in the same phrase. This figure is particulary Horatian.

Treatment of inanimate objects as human.

(adj., pleonastic) use of unneccesary words.

Use of unnecessary conjunctions.

Claiming to not mention or "pass over" something that one plans to say.

Use of a word before it is appropriate in the context. A proleptic adjective does ot apply to its noun until after the action of the verb. It is often best translated with a clause or phrase, to bring out the emphasis on the adjective.

The assumption of another’s persona for rhetorical or dramatic effect.

An expressed comparison, introduced by a word such as similis, qualis, or velut(I).

Use of the part of the whole to avoid common words or to focus attendtion on a particular part.

Separation of the parts of a compound word, usually for metrical convenience.

Transferred Epithet

A device of emphasis in which the poet attributes some characteristic of a thing to another thing closely associated with it.

Tricolon Crescens

A three-part increase of emphasis or enlargement of meaning.

Use of a verb or adjective with two words, to only one of which it literally applies.