al‧lit‧er‧a‧tion /əˌlɪtəˈreɪʃən/ noun [uncountable]
[Date: 1600-1700; Language: Latin; Origin: litera 'letter']
the use of several words together that begin with the same sound or letter in order to make a special effect, especially in poetry

[TahlilGaran] Dictionary of Contemporary English ▲

dialect a form of a language that is spoken in one area of a country, with different words, grammar, or pronunciation from other areas:
Cantonese is only one of many Chinese dialects.
the local dialect
accent the way that someone pronounces words, because of where they were born or live, or their social class:
Karen has a strong New Jersey accent.
an upper class accent
slang very informal spoken language, used especially by people who belong to a particular group, for example young people or criminals:
Teenage slang changes all the time.
‘Dosh’ is slang for ‘money’.
terminology formal the technical words or expressions that are used in a particular subject:
musical terminology
Patients are often unfamiliar with medical terminology.
jargon especially disapproving words and phrases used in a particular profession or subject and which are difficult for other people to understand:
The instructions were written in complicated technical jargon.
‘Outsourcing’ is business jargon for sending work to people outside a company to do.
The letter was full of legal jargon.
metaphor a way of describing something by referring to it as something different and suggesting that it has similar qualities to that thing:
The beehive is a metaphor for human society.
simile an expression that describes something by comparing it with something else, using the words as or like, for example ‘as white as snow’:
The poet uses the simile ‘soft like clay’.
irony the use of words that are the opposite of what you really mean, often in order to be amusing:
‘I’m so happy to hear that,’ he said, with more than a trace of irony in his voice.
bathos a sudden change from a subject that is beautiful, moral, or serious to something that is ordinary, silly, or not important:
The play is too sentimental and full of bathos.
hyperbole a way of describing something by saying that it is much bigger, smaller, worse etc than it actually is – used especially to excite people’s feelings:
In his speeches, he used a lot of hyperbole.
journalistic hyperbole
alliteration the use of several words together that all begin with the same sound, in order to make a special effect, especially in poetry:
the alliteration of the ‘s’ sound in ‘sweet birds sang softly’
imagery the use of words to describe ideas or actions in a way that makes the reader connect the ideas with pictures in their mind:
the use of water imagery in Fitzgerald’s novel ‘The Great Gatsby’
She uses the imagery of a bird’s song to represent eternal hope.
rhetorical question a question that you ask as a way of making a statement, without expecting an answer:
When he said ‘how can these attitudes still exist in a civilized society?’, he was asking a rhetorical question.

[TahlilGaran] English Thesaurus ▲