Exercises on Analogy, Allegory, Metonomy and Synecdoche

Exercises on Analogy, Allegory, Metonomy and Synecdoche I. Questions: 1. What play did the idiom "All that glitters is not gold" originate from? 2. What figure of speech is used in the sentence "He must have been spoilt from the cradle"? 3. What figure of speech is used in the sentence "More hands are needed now"? 4. What examples can you give to indicate the popular use of metonymy in journalism? II. Identify the figures of speech in the following sentences: 1.In rivers the water that you touch is the last of that has passed and the first of that which comes: so with time present. 2. Greece was the cradle of western culture. 3. Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone. 4. Every government should attend to cleaning its own Augean stables. 5. The birds are singing to the smiling year. 6. Would you like a cup or two, Eve? 7. The city has its philharmonic but also its poverty. 8. People often compare life to a road through the mountain because both have their ups and downs. 9. Too many professionally prepared resumes read like a pitch from an old-time snake-oil pedlar. 10.There was a glamour in the air, a something in the special flavor of that moment that was like the consciousness of Salvation, or the smell of ripe peaches on a sunny wall. 11. I took a last drowning look at the title as I gave the book into her hand. 12. The Wall Street definitely has more say in their policy making. III. Write ten sentences in the journalistic style using metonymy. IV. Read and identify the types of figurative language: 1. Naming a part when the whole is meant, or naming a whole when a part is meant, eg: The poor man had six mouths to feed. Wisconsin meets Oregon in the Rose Bowl. 2. Substitution of an associated word for what is actually meant, eg: Suited to the pen, he sought to live by the plow. Only a limited number of the press were admitted to the ceremony. 3. The explanation of a particular subject by pointing out its similarities to another subject which is usually better known or more easily understood, eg: There has been a radical transformation of power. In traditional conflicts, states were like boiled eggs: War — the minute of truth — would reveal whether they were hard or soft. Today interdependence breaks all national eggs into a vast omelet. Power is more difficult to measure than ever before. (Stanbey Hoffman) 4. What I like best are the stern cliffs, with ranges of mountains soaring behind them, full of possibilities, peaks to be scaled only by the most daring. What plants of high altitudes grow 1 unvanished among their crags and valleys? So do I let my imagination play over the recesses of Laura's character, so austere in the foreground but nurturing what treasures of tenderness, like delicate flowers, for the discovery of the venture-some. (V. Sackvile-West) 5. It is certain that had he never lived, most of what is correct in their parrot-learned knowledge would be absent. (J. London) 6. The messenger was not long in returning, followed by a pair of heavy boots that came bumping along the passage like boxes. (Dickens) 2