Figures of Speech — Identify Any One From a Single Sentence in Ten Seconds

A figure of speech is any use of language that departs from the plain literal statement in order to get an effect. There are about twenty names worth knowing, and exams ask them in exactly one shape: here is a sentence, name the figure.

That single shape is good news, because it means you never have to define anything. You only have to recognise. And recognition gets much faster once you stop treating the twenty as a flat list and sort them into three families.

Family one compares two things — simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, transferred epithet.

Family two exaggerates or sets things against each other — hyperbole, litotes, oxymoron, paradox, antithesis, irony, euphemism.

Family three plays with sound or swaps one word for a related one — alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, pun, metonymy, synecdoche, climax.

Given a sentence, decide the family first, then pick inside it. Two easy steps beat one hard one.

BPSC TRE-4 Part I English, CTET language papers, Bihar STET and the English sections of SSC and the railway exams all ask this.

1. Identify the figure of speech: 'The wind whispered through the empty corridor.'

2. Identify the figure of speech: 'Her explanation was as clear as a window.'

3. Identify the figure of speech: 'By the third hour of the meeting, her patience was a thin rope.'

4. Identify the figure of speech: 'The crown ordered a new tax on salt.'

5. Identify the figure of speech: 'He spent a sleepless night before the result.'

6. Identify the figure of speech: 'The manager offered him a kind cruelty — a promotion in another city.'

7. Identify the figure of speech: 'The busy bees buzzed by the balcony.'

8. Identify the figure of speech: 'The captain shouted that he needed more hands on deck.'