Figures

• Affirmation

  A figure in which a speaker positively asserts that a thing is the case — confirming a point, swearing to a fact, or earnestly declaring something to be true.

• Ambiguous

  Ambiguity of grammatical structure — a sentence whose word order or punctuation lets it be read two ways — treated by the classical handbooks as a vice (amphibologia) but exploited deliberately for wit in jokes, headlines, and ad copy.

• Metaphor

  A figure that describes one thing as if it were another, transferring the qualities of the source onto the target without 'like' or 'as'.

• Traductio

  Repetition of the same word — or a different form or sense of it — at intervals through a sentence or passage, for emphasis and cohesion.