LU Skill #52: Use simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, alliteration, and onomatopoeia to make meaning.

What rule or idea must I know?

Figurative language devices, such assimile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, alliteration, and onomatopoeia may be used to expand ideas to add meaning to written pieces.

Simile: A comparison between two seemingly unrelated things, using connecting words such as like, as, or seems.

  • Examples:
  • Mind like a floating cloud,
  • Cold as winter in the Yukon

Metaphor: A comparison that uses no connecting words. An extended metaphor carries the comparison throughout an entire work or section of a work.

  • Examples:
  • The groves were God's first temple.
  • O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky.

Personification: Giving human qualities or actions to something that is not human.

  • Examples:
  • Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
  • ... the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind.

Hyperbole: Obvious exaggeration used to emphasize a point or add excitement and humor to a story.

  • Examples:
  • ... there came a most terrible earthquake, which shook the earth so... we thought it might take a notion and swallow us up, like the big fish did Jonah.
  • I stood in line for six hours at the store.

Alliteration: The repeating of beginning consonant sounds in a group of words.

  • Examples:
  • I will go to the west wall.
  • Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,

Onomatopoeia: A word, such as plop, buzz, or snap, whose sound suggests its meaning.

  • Examples:
  • The moan of doves
  • From the jingling and the tingling of the bells

Why do I need to know this?

Figurative language devices allow the writer to express ideas in original and interesting ways. They also provide more options for writers to expand and add meaning to their works.

What strategy can I use to edit my own work?

  1. Choose a sentence to expand using figurative language devices.
  2. Rewrite the sentence to expand meaning using a figurative language device.
  3. Evaluate whether the figurative language device effectively expanded or created meaning in the sentence.
  4. Rewrite again if necessary until desired meaning is achieved.

What might cause mistakes for this concept?

Mistakes may occur when writers add figurative language devices which do not expand or create meaning and may detract from the writing instead of enhancing it.

Writers should be careful to avoid clichés when using figurative language devices (e.g. "pretty as a picture," "hungry as a horse," "sly like a fox," etc.)