Figure of speech is the use of words in certain conventional patterns of thought and expression. For example, we might read that “The spy was cornered like a rat . . . The crowd surged forward . . . The redcoats withdrew . . . Justice hung her head . . . Here was mercy indeed! . . . The entire nation screamed vengeance.”
Each of these figures of speech has its own name. The first is simile, when the spy is compared with a rat, using the connective word like. The second is metaphor, when the author compares the movement of the crowd to that of an oncoming wave without using the connective words like or as. The third is metonymy, when the word redcoats stands for the soldiers who wear them. The fourth, personification, speaks of justice as though it were a person. The fifth is irony, because the author means the opposite of mercy. The sixth is hyperbole, or exaggeration for special effect.
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Milton's use of figure of speech
Figures of speech are the flowers of rhetoric. They give to poetry much of its beauty and fragrance, its sweetness and germinal power. John Milton wrote, in “On His Being Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three” (1631),
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.”
Without consciously analyzing the personification, metonymy, and metaphor used, the reader still senses the richness of imagery and poetic thought. Everyday speech also uses many such figures.
