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Transferred Epithets
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to combine an incongruous adjective with an incongruous noun, usually by transferring human characteristics onto non-human objects; from the Greek epithetos 'placed upon' or 'added'; similar to hypallage and personification
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Examples
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W.H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love Human upon my faithless arm. P.G. Wodehouse
I took a grave sip of coffee. He breathed a relieved sigh. As I sat in the bathtub, soaping a meditative foot... I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon. He uncovered the fragrant eggs and I pronged a moody forkful. Lord Ickenham proceeded to Beach's pantry where [...] he slipped a remorseful five-pound note into the other's hand. |
Everyday
tired feet stupid smile foolish ideas lonely nights dizzy heights drunk driving guilty secrets disabled toilet restless nights silly questions happy thoughts a thankless task a knowing smile careless thoughts female changing-rooms |
Purpose
Arresting & Comical Incongruity
The transferred epithet creates an arresting and sometimes comical kind of unexpected personification It's a capricious and playful figure of speech. 'Capricious' because it cannot make up its mind what it is. And 'playful' because it has an impish sense of humour.
The transferred epithet is really a figure of description sharing similarities with personification and metonymy. Its playfulness shows in its similarities with figures of expansion like enargia and hyperbole. Transferred epithets generally provide vivid descriptions that are more engaging and comical when the incongruity between noun and epithet is arresting.
The transferred epithet is really a figure of description sharing similarities with personification and metonymy. Its playfulness shows in its similarities with figures of expansion like enargia and hyperbole. Transferred epithets generally provide vivid descriptions that are more engaging and comical when the incongruity between noun and epithet is arresting.
Usage
Use transferred epithets to craft vivid and unexpected descriptions that arrest audiences with incongruity. They feature in poetry and literature. P.G. Wodehouse used them extensively.
P.G. Wodehouse
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He was now smoking a sad cigarette and waiting for the blow to fall.
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It was plain that I had shaken him. His eyes widened, and an astonished piece of toast fell from his grasp.
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He regarded this intruder with a malevolent eye.
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I had wandered into the paddock at the moment. I looked up. Coming towards me at her best pace was a small hen. I recognised her immediately. It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird which Ukridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to his wife's nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevist hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which fed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg.
See also theories and effects of laughter,