*As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There are tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor; and death for his ambition. (William Shakespeare; Julius Caesar, Act III.)

Antithesis - Placing contrasts side by side, usually in parallel statements.

*Give me liberty or give me death! (Patrick Henry)
*The overnight courtship led to a lifelong commitment.
*It may make you sick to learn schemes and tropes, but it will make your speeches healthier.
*She had a sharp wit, which was completely lost on her dull companion.

Asyndeton - Piling up words and phrases without intervening conjunctions.

*Every Friday night you will be stimulated, motivated, excited, intrigued, exasperated, educated, shocked, rocked, provoked, inspired, moved, amused, enlightened and entertained. (ABC News 20/20)
*Driving a pinto is pathetic, boring, slow and even potentially explosive.

Polysyndeton -Using many conjunctions. (Replace every comma in asyndeton with "and" and you will have polysyndeton.)

*We went to a magnificent dinner and had some fabulous desert and saw a  movie and went for a most glorious walk around the park, and I will never     forget this day.
*And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let      them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and  over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:24; 26)

Anaphora - Repeating the same word at the beginning of a sequence of sentences or clauses.

*Driving a Chevy will get you there. Driving a Ford will get you there and back. Driving a Honda will get you there and back in style.

*America is more like a quilt [simile]– many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.  (Jesse Jackson; Democratic Convention Speech, July 17, 1984.)

Epanalepsis - Beginning and ending a sentence with the same sounding word.

*Quit before you’re asked to quit.
*See that you learn your schemes and tropes or else your professor will see.
*Show your self a good time, treat yourself to a show.
*Park your car on the other side of the Hyde Park.
*Write down your work and make sure it’s right.

Epistrophe - Repeating the same word or group of words at the end of a sequence of sentences or clauses. (Epistrophe is anaphora in reverse.)

*I’m a Pepper, she’s a Pepper, we’re a Pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a  Pepper, too?
*When I earn money, I spend money. When I spend money, I have no money.
* . . . and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall  not perish from the earth. (Abraham Lincoln)

Antimetabole -Repetition of words in reverse grammatical order in successive clauses.

*Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. (John F. Kennedy; Inaugural Address, 1961)
*I am stuck on Band-Aids and Band-Aids stuck on me.
*All chickens are birds, but not all birds are chickens.

Alliteration - Repeating initial or middle consonants in two or more successive words.

*The cavity creeps are coming—help! Call Crest.
*Luckily your love for luxury has led you to a Lexus.
*Creating schemes and tropes can cause confusion and chaos but can also allow your to be cleverly creative.
*My constituency is the damned, disinherited, disrespected and the despised. (Jesse Jackson; Democratic Convention Speech, July 17, 1984)

Polyptoton - Repeating a word from the same root but in a different form.

*On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. (G. K. Chesterton; Orthodoxy)
*He may be friendly but he’s not your friend. (Malcolm X; The Ballot or the Bullet)

Metaphor - Implied comparison between two unlike things.

*The car had no more power than a boxer knocked out in the 5^th round.
*I can no more remember the books I have read than the meals I have eaten, but they have made me. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
*Millions of Americans are digging their graves with their own teeth. (Diet  Ad)

Simile - Explicit comparison between two unlike things. (unlike metaphor, simile uses "like" or "as")

*Movies are like cutting onions, they make you cry.
*His mind was as jumpy as a drop of water on a hot griddle.
*She felt like a soggy piece of toast.

Metonymy - Substituting one term for another that is closely related to it.

*The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. (John  Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961)
*The pen is mightier than the sword. (Thomas Paine)
*The White House had no comment on the incident.
*The Crown tried to change its image with pictures of modernization.

Pun - Play on words (Three types are presented here)

*If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.
*He parked his car near Kensington Park.

Paranomasia – Use of words that sound alike but are different in meaning.

*Feeling the dew on the soles of my feet made me want to do more walking in early the morning.

*I sighted the errors she made when she cited her sources.
*Write down your work and make sure it’s right.

Syllepsis – Use of a word differently in relation to two or more other words that it modifies or governs.

*The ink, like our pig, keeps running out of the pen.

Hyperbole - Using exaggerated, even grotesque, terms to add emphasis or heighten effect.

*It reminds me of a string of wet sponges, I reminds me of college yells, of stale bean soup, of tattered washing on the line, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights, it is so bad a certain grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is flap and doodle, it is rumble and bumble, it is balder and dash.

Litotes - Understating a point as a means of drawing attention to its significance.

*Yes, it rains in Seattle.
*Gus meets Julia and sleeps with her: "Nothing had changed except that night has passed over the earth and day had come. Nothing had changed except my life." (Geoffrey Wolff; review of John Wain’s "The Pardoner’s Tale")

Oxymoron - Connecting two contradictory terms.

Paradox - An apparently contradictory statement which yet has a ring of truth.

*We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. (Heraclitus)
*One’s breath is both hot (warm) and cold (cool).
*He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39)

Synecdoche - Using a part to describe the whole (or vice versa)

*The sails disappeared into the golden horizon.
*The rubber wheels rolled along at 60 MPH.
*We asked the law (pointing to George) what the ramifications would be.