In the sentence "The silence in the examination hall was deafening", the figure of speech is
Correct answer: A. oxymoron
- A. oxymoron
- B. simile
- C. metonymy
- D. hyperbole
Explanation
Deafening silence places two contradictory ideas side by side, which is the definition of an oxymoron, as in bittersweet or living dead. A paradox is the related device applied to a whole statement rather than a phrase. The contradiction is deliberate and creates the effect.
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About Figurative Language
Figurative language expresses an idea beyond its literal wording through devices such as simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, irony, oxymoron and metonymy. Questions ask you to identify the device, interpret the intended meaning and distinguish figurative expression from a literal statement or simple comparison.
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Commencement of words with the same letter:
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red, and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things: priceless lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held-so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place-who knows?"Great Stuffer of Bags" is an example of what literary device?
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red, and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things: priceless lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held-so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place-who knows?The entire passage qualifies as which of the following devices?