Literary Devices – 19 Essential Literary Devices
Literary Devices
- Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds in successive stressed syllables
- Allusion: Allusion is a literary or historical reference
- Antanaclasis: Use of the same word or phrase to mean two different things
- Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in nearby syllables to give a rhythmic effect to the text
- Cacophony: Use of harsh and discordant sounding words to describe unpleasant events
- Consonance: Repetition of consonant sounds in nearby syllables
- Euphemism: Replacing a rude, offensive, or distasteful word or phrase with a polite one
- Hyperbole: An exaggeration to emphasise on certain facts
- Idiom: Phrases that have a hidden meaning which isn’t clear when reading the words literally
- Imagery: Literary device that is used to evoke a sensory experience in the reader
- Irony: Used to show the clash between expectations and reality
- Metaphor: Literary device used to convey a message that goes beyond the literal meaning
- Onomatopoeia: Sound words
- Oxymoron: Two words that seem to contradict each other, used together
- Paradox: A statement that appears to be contradictory at the first glance, but begins to makes sense upon deeper reflection
- Personification: Attribution of human traits to inanimate objects
- Rhyme: A close similarity in the final sounds of two or more words or lines of writing
- Simile: A device that is used to convey a message that goes beyond the literal meaning using direct comparisons
- Synecdoche: Using a part to refer to the whole or vice versa
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