at all and has become natural and ordinary usage. Language is rich in these unsuspected figures of speech, the coinage of forgotten or primitive poets, or of those endowed with

The vision and the faculty divine,

Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.

"The essentially poetical or figurative character of language may easily be seen by comparing a number of passages from the poets with ordinary prosaic expressions.

"When Wordsworth writes, in Laodamia,

The gods approve

The depth, and not the tumult of the sou!,

the imaginative power of his phrasing at once appeals to us. If, however, we compare such common expressions as 'He was deeply moved,' 'profoundly affected,' 'from the bottom of my heart,' we recognize the same figure of speech." 1

The figures of speech most commonly used are simile, metaphor, personification, metonymy, and synecdoche.

The simile and the metaphor are figures founded on the principle of comparison, the simile being an explicit, the metaphor an implied comparison.

Examples of these figures are the following:

I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.

1 Greenough and Kittredge, Words and Their Ways, pp. 9, 10.

They (the mountain ranges) have needles that are lifted skyward like Moslem minarets or cathedral spires; and at evening, if there is a yellow light, they shine like brazen spearpoints set against the sky.

Byron, when he suddenly shot above the horizon, seemed to be a star almost of the first magnitude; now, however, his luster scarcely warrants one in classing him as even of the second magnitude.

To them (the mosses and lichens), slow-fingered, constanthearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal tapestries of the hills.

Personification is a figure wherein an inanimate thing or abstract conception is spoken of as having life and mind. Like the metaphor, it is a comparison by implication only.

Examples:

Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate.

Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of a collateral line, called Mirth, by whom he had issue, Humor.

Metonymy and synecdoche are figures which Iderive their force from the law of association. them, one thing is spoken of as another because of some constant relation or association between the two. The figures are usually distinguished, though without very much reason. Thus where the sign is put for the thing signified, the effect for the cause, and so on, the figure is called metonymy; where the part is put for the whole, the individual for the class, and the like, the figure is called synecdoche.

Examples:

Gray hairs should be respected.

The opinion of the bar is against it.
The bench is the goal of his ambition.
He at least won the applause of the gallery.
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest.
She had seen but sixteen summers.

He is a disgrace to his cloth.

Not half an hour later I saw the red-coats coming around the bend in the road beyond the meadow.

Other figures of speech deserving of note are: a. Hyperbole, where the thing spoken of is magnified or belittled, as, for example,

Rivers of wine flowed at the banquet.

b. Irony, where the thought to be conveyed is the exact opposite of that apparently expressed, as, for example,

No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom will die with you.

c. Apostrophe, where the absent are spoken of as if present, as, for example,

Unhappy Rousseau: must thou not have thy meed of pity?

It is often supposed that the sole use of figurative language is to serve the purpose of ornamentation rather than of practical utility. This, however, is a mistake. Good figures of speech, as well as adding

to the attractiveness of a writer's style, add also to its force and lucidity. In fact, they should never be used at all unless they add something either to the clearness or to the force of the literal statement. For whatever purpose they are used, however, they should always be as simple and as much in keeping with the subject, or thing to be illustrated, as possible. Moreover, they should always be consistent in themselves. Mixed metaphors are proverbially ineffective.

55. Phrasing. An apt choice of words is, as we have seen, an essential characteristic of a good style. No less essential a characteristic is good phrasing, or the arrangement of the words in effective combinations. The influence of word upon word is very real, and the writer who does not take this fact into account is blind to part of his duty as a writer. He cannot throw his words together pell-mell, without regard to congruity or euphony, and expect to have them communicate his thought and emotion with effect. If he expects them to accomplish his purpose, he must adapt them to one another. He must see that, in the matter of their connotation, they will sort well together, — that is, that they do not call up associated ideas of an utterly incongruous and contradictory character; and he must also see that they do not make discordant or harsh-sounding combinations.

Sentences like the following, for example, could not have been written by any writer with a proper sense of beauty or propriety in phrasing:

Her pride is here thrown aside and the humorous side of her character revealed.

An ugly rumor had become attached to him that he possessed a yellow streak which sooner or later would come out.

In the first sentence the quick repetition of the “i” sound in "pride," "aside," and "side" is disagreeable; and in the second, the incongruity of putting "rumor" and "attached" together jars upon one. A rumor properly means a sound, and imagine a sound attaching itself to anything.

The main things to be kept in mind in phrasing are conciseness, congruity, euphony, and variety.

56. Conciseness. Only so many words as are necessary should be used in a sentence and no more. Redundancy, or the use of more words than are necessary, is always a bar to the effective communication of thought. Notice the wordiness of the following sentence, for example:

It would indeed be extremely difficult to find, either in the realm of history or in that of fiction, two other characters so different in general make-up and disposition, and yet so congenial to each other even though put under the most trying and exasperating circumstances.

Virtually the same idea can be expressed, and expressed much more effectively, by the following greatly shortened form:

It would be difficult to find either in history or in fiction two other characters so different in disposition and yet so thoroughly congenial to each other.