Tropes
Tropes “turn away” from common usage and meaning, principally through taking a word from one domain within which it belongs, and carrying over into another domain within which it does not originate.
The four master tropes are: Metaphor, where a word is transferred, carried over, from its proper meaning to another, by creating a similarity between two dissimilar things: “Procrastination is dancing after the song has ended.” Metonymy, where the effect stands in for the cause, or vice versa, or a thing stands in for an associated, contiguous thing: “Rowan is proud of its status in the list of schools that give its students the greatest degree of social mobility.” Synecdoche, where a part of a whole stands for the whole, or the whole stands for the part: “I have spilled too much ink on Nietzsche’s essay ‘On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense.’” Irony, where the writer enacts an inversion or reversal of expectations, which requires two audiences: an authorial audience who sides with the author, who sees and gets the irony, and a narrative audience who only sees the narrator, and who misses the irony: “I adore those neighbors who throw parties late into the week nights, and I especially love those who let loose partygoers who then storm the streets hurling slurred speeches out loud and into the ears of those trying to sleep.”
Here are a few other important tropes to look out for and practice in your writing:
Anthimeria: substituting one part of speech for another: “Friend me!” Antonomasia: using a descriptive phrase instead of a proper noun Hyperbole: overstatement Litotes: understatement: “I am not unmoved when the vulnerable suffer” Paranomasia: punning Periphrasis: replacing a single word with a string of words Onomatopoeia: the sound of the word imitates what it names Tmesis: a word broken up into pieces: “fan-freaking-tastic” |
Others tropes
Irony
Antiphrasis (negation)
Meiosis (diminish)
Auxesis (amplify)
Hyperbole
Amphiboly
Euphemism
Dysphemism
Paronomasia
Alliteration
Assonance
Onomatopoeia
Periphrasis
Erotesis
Hypophora
Aporia
Battology
Pleonasm
Macrologia
Tautologia
Purple Prose
Bathos
Barbarism
Soraismus
Solecism
Malapropism
Bushism
Antiphrasis (negation)
Meiosis (diminish)
Auxesis (amplify)
Hyperbole
Amphiboly
Euphemism
Dysphemism
Paronomasia
Alliteration
Assonance
Onomatopoeia
Periphrasis
Erotesis
Hypophora
Aporia
Battology
Pleonasm
Macrologia
Tautologia
Purple Prose
Bathos
Barbarism
Soraismus
Solecism
Malapropism
Bushism