Figures of Speech

Both figures compare two different things. The only difference is the way the comparison is made.

A simile says the comparison aloud, with the help of like, as or as … as. A metaphor drops the helper word and says that one thing is the other.

✔ Simile: She is as brave as a lion.
✔ Simile: He ran like the wind.
✔ Metaphor: Time is money.
✔ Metaphor: The classroom was a zoo.

Two cautions. First, like does not always make a simile. In She likes music or Do it like this nothing is being compared. A simile joins two things of different kinds, such as a poet and a cloud. Second, She is as tall as her sister compares two people of the same kind, so it is plain comparison and not a figure.

I wandered lonely as a cloud is the standard simile. The poet is not a cloud; he is only as lonely as one.

Personification gives human actions or feelings to something that is not human: an object, an animal, a thought, a season.

✔ The wind whispered through the trees.
✔ The stars danced in the sky.
✔ The sun smiled on the fields.

The test is the verb. Whispering, dancing and smiling are human acts, and the subject is not a person. In The crown will find an heir, the verb find is also human, but the crown stands for the king, so that line belongs with metonymy (see the later unit).

Apostrophe is a speaker turning away to address someone who is not there, or something that cannot answer: a dead person, an idea, a lute, Death.

✔ O Death, where is thy sting?
✔ My lute, awake!

Apostrophe usually carries personification with it, because one speaks only to what one treats as alive. That is why a passage question about My Lute Awake gave "Apostrophe, because the poet speaks directly to his lute, which is a personification". Apostrophe is the figure of addressing; personification is the figure of giving life.

Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration. The writer knows the statement is not literally true and uses it to show how strong a feeling or fact is.

✔ I have told you a million times.
✔ I am so hungry I could eat a horse.
✔ This bag weighs a ton.

The speaker did not say it a million times and the bag is not a ton. If the number or size is impossible and the aim is emphasis, the figure is hyperbole.

Understatement is the opposite: a serious thing is described in small words, often to make it more striking.

✔ It was a bit of a shock. (said about a terrible accident)
✔ The Sahara is slightly warm in summer.

It is usually mild and a little humorous. When the small word is made by denying the opposite (not bad for very good, no small matter for a big matter), the figure has its own name, litotes, but SSC does not ask the name; it asks you not to confuse the exaggerating and the softening.

Hyperbole is also not a lie and not a metaphor. He is a giant may be a metaphor for a great man; He is ten feet tall is hyperbole.

These three figures all use opposites, which is why students mix them up. Separate them by size: a word, a statement, a pair of ideas.

Oxymoron puts two opposite words side by side, in one phrase.

✔ deafening silence
✔ bitter sweet
✔ a cruel kindness
✔ living death

Paradox is a whole statement that sounds false or self-contradictory, yet on thinking turns out to be true.

✔ The child is the father of the man. (the habits of the child shape the adult)
✔ Less is more.

Antithesis sets two opposite ideas against each other in a balanced sentence, so that the contrast is sharp.

✔ Man proposes, God disposes.
✔ To err is human; to forgive, divine.

The one-word substitute for a statement that appears self-contradictory yet may be true is paradox, and SSC CGL has asked that exact definition.

Irony says one thing and means the opposite, or shows an outcome that is the opposite of what was expected. The reader sees the real meaning because the facts do not match the words.

✔ What pleasant weather! (said in the middle of heavy rain)
✔ Thank you for being so early. (said to someone who is an hour late)

The test is the gap between words and situation. The words are warm, the situation is not.

Sarcasm is irony with a sting. The speaker uses the opposite words deliberately to hurt or mock someone.

✔ Oh, brilliant! You have lost the keys again.

All sarcasm is irony, but not all irony is sarcasm. A soft, gentle irony (How lucky of us to find the only closed shop in the city) may only smile at a situation.

In reading comprehension the same idea appears as tone. When a question asks for the tone of a line, and the writer says something that he clearly does not believe, the answer is ironic. Selection Post asked the tone of the last line We are a starving nation! The author does not believe that the country is starving after reading a poor ranking report; the contrast between expectation and reality makes the tone ironic.

These three figures all work by substitution: the word on the page is not the thing meant, but something attached to it.

Metonymy names a thing by something closely associated with it.

✔ The pen is mightier than the sword. (pen = writing, sword = fighting)
✔ The crown will find an heir. (crown = the king or monarchy)
✔ The White House announced a new policy. (the building = the American government)

Synecdoche names the whole by a part, or a part by the whole.

✔ All hands on deck. (hands = sailors)
✔ He asked for her hand in marriage. (hand = the person)
✔ Ten head of cattle were sold. (head = animal)

Transferred epithet moves an adjective from the person who really feels it to a thing nearby.

✔ a sleepless night (the person is sleepless, not the night)
✔ a happy morning
✔ the condemned cell

The quickest way to separate metonymy and synecdoche: if the substitute is physically a part (hand, head, wheels), it is synecdoche; if it is only connected (crown, pen, White House), it is metonymy.

Some figures play with sound, not with meaning. They are the easiest to spot because they can be heard.

Alliteration repeats the same starting sound in nearby words.

✔ Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
✔ Radhika read the red book regularly.

Say sound, not letter. Knight and night begin with the same sound, so they alliterate; city and cat begin with the same letter but different sounds, so they do not.

Onomatopoeia is a word whose sound imitates the sound it names.

✔ buzz, hiss, bang, splash, thud, murmur

The bees buzzed around the flowers is onomatopoeia because buzz sounds like the bee.

Assonance repeats a vowel sound inside nearby words (the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain), and consonance repeats a consonant sound inside or at the end of words (pitter-patter). SSC rarely names these two, but it is worth knowing that a line such as The poet employs alliteration and sonic texture to evoke rhythm is a statement about sound devices.

Euphemism replaces a harsh, blunt or unpleasant word with a softer one. The meaning is the same, only the sting is removed.

✔ He passed away. (instead of He died.)
✔ She is between jobs. (instead of She is unemployed.)
✔ The smallest room in the house. (instead of the toilet)
✔ The elderly. (instead of old people)

A euphemism is mostly a matter of manners. We use it for death, disease, money, the body and failure, topics where a plain word may hurt or embarrass.

It is the opposite of speaking bluntly. The idiom not to mince matters means to speak without hesitation or euphemism, and SSC used that very word in its option. MTS (18 Feb 2026) asked which expression is a euphemism for a bathroom, and the answer was the polite phrase the smallest room in the house.

Be careful: a euphemism hides the harshness but does not change the fact. If a sentence says the opposite of the fact, it is irony.

In recent papers the metaphor question does not ask you to name a figure. It asks for the choice of the image that matches the passage.

• CGL (16 Sep 2025): *Which of the following metaphors best captures the overall argument of the passage?* The options were a bridge that never meets the other side, a mirror reflecting only half the image, a labyrinth filled with shifting doors, and a ladder leading to one clear peak.
• Steno (15 Sep 2026): What metaphor best captures the author's contrast between history and culture?

Each option is a small picture. The task is to turn the passage into one plain sentence first, then to turn each picture into a plain sentence, and to see which two match.

Step 1. Say the passage in one line. Use the first and the last sentence. In the Steno passage the author says that if history is architecture, then culture is weather. History is a built, fixed structure; culture changes every day and cannot be held.

Step 2. Translate every picture.

Step 3. Match, and reject two kinds of options. Reject the simple and extreme picture (a ladder leading to one clear peak promises one clear goal, while the passage was about confusion and changing paths) and the picture that is nice but says something else (a seed and soil is about growth, not contrast).

The match must be with the author's central idea, not with a single word that sounds familiar.

A figurative phrase is quoted from the passage and the question asks: what does it mean or what does the author imply by it? The answer is never the literal picture; it is the plain idea behind the picture.

Here are the phrases SSC has asked, with their plain meanings:

The method in four steps.
1. Go back to the sentence in the passage and read the line before and after it.
2. Say the phrase in plain words first, before looking at the options.
3. Cross out the literal options. In the Kalamkari question, written with ink, not dye is the literal trap for palimpsest.
4. Cross out options that bring in facts the passage does not state, and pick the one whose reasoning matches the sentence.

> A phrase borrowed from another field (echo chamber from sound, constellation from the sky, entropy from physics) must be read for its idea, not for its field.

Here the line comes from a passage and the question asks for the device, the figure or the tone. The first ten units are used directly, with one change: the passage shows what the writer feels, and that feeling decides the answer.

Three papers show the pattern.

• Steno 2026 quoted They do not forget, but neither do they forgive and asked for the rhetorical device. Two balanced clauses are set against each other, so the closest of the four options (irony, euphemism, antithesis, personification) is antithesis.
• MTS (18 Feb 2026) quoted a poem passage and asked which device shapes the dramatic opening of My Lute Awake. The poet speaks to his lute and calls it to wake: apostrophe, with personification.
• Selection Post (Phase XII) asked the tone of the last line We are a starving nation! The author does not believe it after a poor ranking report, so the tone is ironic.

Method.
1. Read the quoted line once more inside its paragraph.
2. Ask the five questions of the foundation unit.
3. Ask a second question that only comprehension needs: does the writer mean this literally? If not, it is irony or hyperbole; if he is speaking to someone absent, apostrophe; if two ideas are set against each other, antithesis.
4. Among the options, take the one that fits the closest, not the one that sounds most literary.

> Tone words and device words are different lists. Ironic and sarcastic can be both; antithesis and personification are devices only.