Figuratively Speaking

Ring-a-ling-a-ling!

School’s in session, girlfriends.

And I have a Glitterati Literati quiz for you.

This is brain-flexing fun—volleying verbiage, prettying plain prattle, gussying up glib gab.

(Say that last one five times fast!)

I do love …

… havin’ fun with words.

But, I started wondering if I could tag titles to my word play …

Consider, for example:

Alliterate vs. assonate.

Hyperbole, or is it simile?

See where I’m going with this?

So, I saddled up my memory and rode back in time, somewhere in the vicinity of junior high, to the days when I learned the finer points of figurative language.

I quizzed myself on keen word play;

Personification and good old cliché.

Idiom, I knew, and metaphor,

And I ended up with a pretty good score! 

Tackle it, and tell me how fabulously you fare.

Figurative Language Quiz:

Read each sentence, and choose which type of figurative speech is being used from the options below it. The answers are given at the end, so don’t peek until you’re finished.

1. MaryJane made marshmallows and marmalade with Ms. Matilda Mason at the market in Moscow.

• Alliteration
• Personification
• Hyperbole
• Metaphor

2. I edited the essay a thousand and one times before publishing it.

• Simile
• Hyperbole
• Personification
• Onomatopoeia

3. The snowflakes danced across the frozen pond.

• Personification
• Hyperbole
• Simile
• Metaphor

4. She was a butterfly, fluttering off the porch in her flowing skirt.

• Simile
• Hyperbole
• Personification
• Metaphor

5. The kettle hit the floor with a crash and a splash.

• Onomatopoeia
• Idiom
• Hyperbole
• Oxymoron

6. The kids’ footsteps sounded like thunder as they came running up the stairs.

• Personification
• Metaphor
• Simile
• Idiom

7. We’ll have to dress the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

• Hyperbole
• Simile
• Onomatopoeia
• Idiom

8. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

• Personification
• Cliché
• Metaphor
• Hyperbole

Answers:

1. Alliteration is the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words or phrases.
2. Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech.
3. Personification is the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristic to something nonhuman.
4. Metaphor is a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.
5. Onomatopoeia is the formation and use of words to imitate sounds. (Hear onomatopoeia pronounced here.)
6. Simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things.
7. Idiom is an expression that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words.
8. Cliché is a trite or overused expression or idea.