Vernacular Discourse
  • Figures & Schemes
    • Similarity and Difference >
      • Analogy & Simile
      • Antithesis & Chiasmus
      • Fable & Allegory
      • Metaphor
      • Metonymy & Synecdoche
      • Personification
      • Synesthesia
      • Transferred Epithet
    • Expansion & Contraction >
      • Amplification & Depreciation
      • Apposition & Parenthesis
      • Enargia
      • Euphemism & Dysphemism
      • Hyperbole & Litotes
      • Rhetorical Question
    • Music and Repetition >
      • Alliteration & Assonance
      • Anadiplosis & Hyperbaton
      • Anaphora & Epistrophe
      • Asyndeton & Polysyndeton
      • Parallelism & Isocolon
      • Repetition
      • Short & Simple Words & Styles
      • Tricolon
    • Play and Mischief >
      • Irony & Sarcasm
      • Parodox, Oxymoron & Aphorism
      • Parody & Satire
      • Ridicule
      • Wordplay
  • Short Introduction
  • A-Z of Figures
  • Contact



Figures of play and mischief tragicomically celebrate and condemn.

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Irony & Sarcasm

No authentic human life is possible without irony - Kierkegaard

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Paradox, Oxymoron & Aphorism
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about - Oscar Wilde

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Parody & Satire

Satire
comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable - Finley Peter Dunne

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Ridicule
When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Some chicken! Some neck! - Winston Churchill

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Wordplay

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled - P.G. Wodehouse

© 2015 Danyal Freeman