Definition:
The various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance. See:
Examples and Observations:
- "When I think back to the floodlit, nighttime images of George W. Bush speaking at Jackson Square in New Orleans shortly after Katrina hit, it is clear that once the floodlights went out, 'out of sight' was to become more than a figure of speech. It became government policy, and the darkness that is all too apparent is one of spirit and not just a lack of illumination."
(Joel Raven, New York Times, December 16, 2006) - "Because of the Anagrams dispute it has been decided to devote the rest of this space to a page specially written for people who like figures of speech, for the not a few fans of litotes, and those with no small interest in meiosis, for the infinite millions of hyperbole-lovers, for those fond of hypallage, and the epithet's golden transfer, for those who fall willingly into the arms of the metaphor, those who give up the ghost, bury their heads in the sand and ride roughshod over the mixed metaphor . . .. It will be, too, for those who reprehend the malapropism; who love the wealth of metonymy; for all friends of rhetoric and syllepsis; and zeugmatists with smiling eyes and hearts. . . . And as for the lovers of aposiopesis--! It will wish bienvenu to all classical adherents of euphuism, all metathesistic birds, golden paranomasiasts covered in guilt, fallacious paralogists, trophists, anagogists, and anaphorists; to greet, welcome, embrace asyndeton buffs, while the lovers of ellipsis will be well-met and its followers embraced, as will be chronic worshippers of catachresis and supporters of anastrophe the world over."
(Monty Python, "The Announcement for People Who Like Figures of Speech")
Pronunciation: FIG-yur uv SPEECH
