his "Don Juan" where the name is followed or preceded by an explanatory remark, as in the following:

"Sir John Pottledeep, the mighty drinker." "There was the sage Miss Reading." "And the two fair co-heiresses Giltbedding" "There was Dick Dubious, the metaphysician,

Who loved philosophy and a good dinner; Angle, the soi-disant mathematician', Sir Henry Silvercup, the great race-winner"

The explanatory words, as it were, revive the logical meaning of the proper names, thus making more apparent the interplay of logical and nominal meanings.

The use of antonomasia is now not confined to the belles-lettres style. It is often found in publicistic style, that is, in magazine and newspaper articles, in essays and also in military language. The following are examples:

"I say this to our American friends. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways does not get very far in this world." (The Times)

"I suspect that the Noes and Don't Knows would far outnumber the Yesses" (The Spectator)

So far we have dealt with a variety of antonomasia in which common words with obvious logical meaning are given nominal meaning without losing their primary, basic significance. But antonomasia can ^Iso make a word which now has a basic nominal meaning acquire a ge-. neric signification, thus supplying the word with an additional logical meaning. The latter can only be deciphered if the events connected with a certain place mentioned or with a conspicuous feature of a person are well known. Thus, the word Dunkirk now means 4he evacuation of troops under heavy bombardment before it is too late', Sedan means *a complete defeat', Coventry—'the destruction of a city by air raids', a quizling now means 'a traitor who aids occupying enemy forces'.

The spelling of these words demonstrates the stages by which proper nouns acquire new, logical meanings: some of them are still spelt with capital letters (geographical names), others are already spelt with small letters showing that a new word with a primary logical meaning has already come into existence.

This variety of antonomasia is not so widely used as a stylistic device, most probably due to the nature of words with nominal meaning: they tell very Jittle or even nothing about the bearer of the name,

C. INTENSIFICATION OF A CERTAIN FEATURE OF A THING OR PHENOMENON

In order to understand the linguistic nature of the SDs of this group it is necessary to clear 4up some problems, so far untouched, of d e f i n i-t i о п as a philosophical category, Any definition can point out only one or two properties of a phenomenon* Therefore in building up a definition the definer tries to single out the most essential features of the object. These are pinned down by the definer through a long period of observation of the object, its functioning, its growth and its changes.

However, no definition can comprise all the inner qualities of the object and new combinations of it with other objects as well; a deeper penetration into the ontology of the object will always reveal some hitherto unknown qualities and features.

In the third group of stylistic devices, which we now come to, we find that one of the qualities of the object in question is made to sound essential, This is an entirely different principle from that on which the second

group is based, that of interaction between two lexical meanings simultaneously materialized in the context. In this third group the quality picked out may be seemingly unimportant, and it is frequently transitorv but for a special reason it is elevated to the greatest importance and made into a telling feature,

Simile

Things are best of all learned by simile. V. G. Belinsky

The intensification of some one feature of the concept in question is realized in a device called simile. Ordinary comparison and simile must not be confused. They represent two diverse processes. Comparison means weighing two objects belonging to one class of things with the purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or difference. To use a simile is to characterize one object by bringing it into contact with another object belonging to an entirely different class of things. Comparison takes into consideration all the properties of the two objects, stressing the one that is compared. Simile excludes all the properties of the two objects except one which is made common to them. For exampULJiZfe-L boy seemsJo be as clever as his mother' is ordinary comparison. 'Boy' and ^fflotKeF belong to the same class of objects— human beings—so this is not a simile but ordinary comparison.

But in the sentence:

"Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare" (Byron), we have a simile. 'Maidens' and 'moths' belong to heterogeneous classes of objects and Byron has found the concept moth to indicate one of the secondary features of the concept maiden, i.e. being easily lured. Of the two concepts brought together in the simile—one characterized (maidens), and the other characterizing (moths)—the feature intensified will be more inherent in the latter than in the former. Moreover, the object characterized is seen in quite a new and unexpected light, because the writer, as it were, imposes this feature on it.

Similes forcibly set one object against another regardless of the fact that they may be completely alien to each other. And without our being aware of it, the simile gives rise to a new understanding of the object characterizing as well as of the object characterized.

The properties of an object may be viewed from different angles, for example, its state, actions, manners, etc. Accordingly, similes may be based on adjectiveattributes, adverb-modifiers, verb-predicates, etc.

Similes have formal elements in their structure: connective words such as like, as, such as, as if, seem. Here are some examples of similes taken from various sources

and illustrating the variety of structural designs of this stylistic device.

"His mind was restless, but it worked perversely and thoughts Jerked through his brain like the misfirings of a defective carburettor" (Maugham

The structure of this simile is interesting, for it is sustained. Let us analyse it. The word 'jerked' in the'micro-context, i.e. in combination with 'thoughts' is a metaphor, which led to the simile 'like the misfir-ings of a defective carburettor' where the verb to jerk carries its direct logical meaning. So the linking notion is the movement jerking which brings to the author's mind a resemblance between the working of the man's brain and the badly working, i.e. misfiring, carburettor. In other words, it is action that is described by means of a simile. Another example:

"It was that moment of the year when the countryside seems to faint from its own loveliness, from the intoxication of its scents and sounds." (J. Galsworthy)

This is an example of a simile which is half a metaphor. If not for the structural word 'seems', we would call it a metaphor. Indeed, if we drop the word 'seems* and say, "the countryside faints from...," the clue-word 'faint' becomes a metaphor. But the word 'seems' keeps apart the notions of stillness and fainting. It is a simile where the second member—the human being—is only suggested by means of the concept faint.

The semantic nature of the simile-forming elements seem and as if is such that they only remotely suggest resemblance. Quite 'different are the connectives like and as. These are more categorical and establish quite straightforwardly the analogy between the two objects in question.

Sometimes the simile-forming like is placed at the end of the phrase almost merging with it and becoming half-suffix, for example:

"Emily Barton was very pink, very Dresden-china-shepherdess like."

In simple non-figurative language, it will assume the following form: "Emily Barton was very pink, and looked like a Dresden-china-shepherdess"

Similes may suggest analogies in the character of actions performed. In this case the two members of the structural design of the simile will resemble each other through the actions they perform. Thus:

"The Liberals have plunged for entry without considering its effects, while, the Labour leaders like cautious bathers have put a timorous toe info the water and promptly withdrawn it"

The simile in this passage from a newspaper article 'like cautious bathers' is based on the simultaneous realization of the two meanings of the word plunge. The primary meaning 'to throw oneself into the water'—prompted the figurative periphrasis 'have put a timorous toe into the water and promptly withdrawn it' standing for 'have abstained from

taking action.'

In the English language there is a long list of hackneyed similes pointing out the analogy between the various qualities, states or actions of a human being and the animals supposed to be the bearers of the given quality, etc,, for example:

treacherous as a snake, sly as a fox, busy as a bee, industrious as an -ant, blind as

a bat, faithful as a dog, to work like a horse, to be led like a sheep, to fly like a bird, to swim like a duck, stubborn as a mule, hungry as a bear, thirsty as a camel, to act like a puppy, playful as a kitten, vain (proud) as a peacock, slow as a tortoise and many others of the same type.

These combinations, however, have ceased to be genuine similes and have become cliches (see p. 177) in which the second component has become merely an adverbial intensifier. Its logical meaning is only vaguely perceived,

Periphrasis

Periphrasis is a device which, according to Webster's dictionary, denotes the use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter and plainer form of expression. It is also called circumlocution due to the round-about or indirect way used to name a familiar object or phenomenon. Viewed from the angle of its linguistic nature, periphrasis represents the renaming of an object and as such may be considered along with a more general group of word designations replacing the direct names of their denotata. One and the same object may be identified in different ways and accordingly acquire different appelations. Thus, in different situations a certain person can be denoted, for instance, as either 'his benefactor', or 'this bore', or 'the narrator', or 'the wretched witness', etc. These names will be his only in a short fragment of the discourse, the criterion of their choice being furnished by the context. Such naming units may be called secondary, textually-confined designations and are generally composed of a word-combination.

This device has a long history. It was widely used in the Bible and in Homer's Iliad. As a poetic device it was very popular in Latin poetry (Virgil). Due to this influence it became an important feature of epic and descriptive poetry throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. It is due to this practice of re-naming things that periphrasis became one of the most favoured devices in the 17th and 18th centuries giving birth even to a special trend in literature in France and other countries called periphrastic. There exists in English a whole battery of phrases which are still used as periphrastic synonyms (see below) for ordinary denominations of things and phenomena.

V. N. Yartseva quotes S. K. Workman, an English literature scholar who states that "the most pervasive element in the^aureate style—and the most vitiating—was periphrasis." Prof. Yartseva states that the use of periphrasis in the 16th century was in the nature of embellishment, thus justifying the attribute aureate, and that periphrasis became a feature of a definite literary style.1

As a SD, periphrasis aims at pointing to one of the seemingly insignificant or barely noticeable features or properties of the given object, and

intensifies this property by naming the object by the property. Periphrasis makes the reader perceive the new appellation against the background of the one existing in the language code and the twofold simultaneous perception secures the stylistic effect. At the same time periphrasis, like simile, has a certain cognitive function inasmuch as