Simile: a comparison using "like" or "as"
Then felt I like...
...stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Metaphor: an implied comparison
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Metonymy: a conventional substitution
According to the Kremlin...
Synecdoche: substituting a part for the whole
Give me a hand with that ladder
Hyperbole: Willful exaggeration
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow
Pun: One word: two meanings
I sing of a maiden
That is makeles (matchless-"without an equal" and "without a mate")
Oxymoron: a flat contradiction
Milton's hell as "darkness visible"
Conceit: a far-fetched comparison
My vegetable love...
Image: words which convey a strong mental picture
A host, of golden daffodils
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Symbol: A thing that stands for something else.
Turning and turning in the widening byre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer:
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold...
Personification: Giving human qualities to non-human things:
Daffodils "tossing their heads in a sprightly dance"
Allegory: Symbolic characters in symbolic action: symbols extended over time.
"Pilgrim's Progress" "The Fairy Queene" "Moby Dick"
Fable: An allegory in which animals act like humans
"The Nun's Priest's Tale" "Animal Farm"
Parable: An allegory with a strong moral message
The parable of the vineyard.