4. What is a trite simile?

The fact is, many, many existing similes have actually become clichés, trite expressions that are so familiar that they may not only have lost effect but also suggest a lack of inventiveness and freshness - just the impressions that writers who employ similes are usually trying to avoid. Here is a list of some of the most common clichéd similes with as: as black as coal; as blind as a bat; as cold as ice; as dry as dust etc.

4. What stylistic device makes use of negative constructions?

Litotes makes use of negative constructions. Though one negation plus a noun or an adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing, this positive feature is a little diminished in quality as compared with a synonymous expression. Compare: He is no coward. — He is a brave man.These two phrases are not exactly the same, the construction with litotes is weaker in meaning. At the same time they possess additional connotation and admit of special interpretation.

II. Analyze the following sentences (state the stylistic device used):

1. Women have a wonderful instinct about the things. They can discover everything – except the obvious. – Anticlimax, there is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous

2. This was appalling – and soon forgotten. – Anticlimax, it is used here by the author for the creation of irony and paradoxes. This illogical sequence of the arrangement of the semantic components in the utterance may create a humorous effect.

3. She has always been as live as a bird. – Simile, this is a stylistic device consisting in partial imaginative comparison of two objects belonging to different classes, which consists of two components.

4. as wet as a fish - Simile, this is a stylistic device consisting in partial imaginative comparison of two objects belonging to different classes, which consists of two components.

5. Kristen said not without dignity: “Too much talking is unwise.” – Litotes, this device makes use of negative constructions. Though one negation plus a noun or an adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing, this positive feature is a little diminished in quality as compared with a synonymous expression.

6. Suddenly Miss Morgan felt fear rising in her. With difficulty she mastered her trembling voice: - What- what is it you want? Tularecito smiled more broadly and whipped harder with his hat. – Solecism - is a stylistic device, which is defined as a grammatical mistake or intentional use of incorrect grammar in written language and speech. It is also a misuse or misapplication of grammatical customs and rules that are generally unintentional and not acceptable.

7. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. – Framing, a kind of repetition in which the opening word is repeated at the end of a sense-group or a sentence.

8. First the front, then the back, then the superscription, then the seal, where objects of Newman’s admiration. – Polysyndeton, repetition of conjunction(s) in close succession as one of the homogeneous parts.

9. Women are not made for attack. Wait they must. - Stylistic inversion.

10. Out came the chase – in went the horses – on sprang the boys – in got the travelers. –Inversion, is a literary technique in which the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter, here - Placing a verb before its subject.