Figures of Speech and Phrasal Verbs
This section combines two different skills. Figures of speech ask you to name the device used in a line of prose or poetry. Phrasal verbs ask you to interpret a verb plus particle, where the particle changes the meaning completely.
Figures of speech
- Simile: comparison using like or as - as brave as a lion.
- Metaphor: direct identification without like/as - the classroom was a zoo.
- Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things.
- Hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration.
- Oxymoron: contradictory pair - bitter-sweet, deafening silence.
- Irony: saying the opposite of what is meant, or an outcome that mocks expectation.
- Metonymy: naming by association - the crown for the monarchy.
- Synecdoche: part for whole - all hands on deck.
- Litotes: understatement through negation - not bad.
- Euphemism: mild term for something harsh - passed away.
- Apostrophe: addressing an absent person or abstract thing - O death, where is thy sting?
Phrasal verbs
- call off = cancel; put off = postpone; give in = surrender; give up = quit; turn up = arrive; turn down = reject; put up with = tolerate; look after = care for.
- Some are separable: put the meeting off or put off the meeting, but a pronoun must go between - put it off, never put off it.
- Others are inseparable: look after the baby, never look the baby after.
Worked example
The classroom was a zoo. Which figure is used? Answer: metaphor. The subject is identified directly with the image; a simile would read the classroom was like a zoo. No human quality is given to an object, so personification is wrong.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing up simile and metaphor when like is absent.
- Labelling any exaggeration as personification, or any contrast as irony.
- Confusing metonymy (association) with synecdoche (part for whole).
- Reading a phrasal verb literally: turn up is not about turning anything upward.