Page:Hill's manual of social and business forms.djvu/103

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Allusion is that use of language whereby in a word or words we recall some interesting incident or condition by resemblance or contrast.

After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Hancock remarked to his fellow signers that they must all hang together. "Yes," said Franklin "or we shall all hang separately."

The allusion in this case turns to a pun, which is a play upon words.

A continued allusion and resemblance in style becomes a parody.

Exclamation is a figure of speech used to express more strongly the emotions of the speaker.

Interrogation is a rhetorical figure by which the speaker puts opinions in the form of questions for the purpose of expressing thought more positively and vehemently without expectation of the questions being answered.

Euphemism (u-fe-miz-em) is a word or sentence so chosen and expressed as to make a disagreeable fact sound more pleasantly than if told in plain language.

Apostrophe like the exclamation is the sudden turning away, in the fullness of emotion, to address some other person or object. In this we address the absent or dead as if present or alive, and the inanimate as if living.

This figure of speech usually indicates a high degree of excitement.

Thus King David, on hearing of the death of Absalom, exclaims,!O, my son Absalom, my son, my son!"

Ossian's Address to the Moon, is one of the most beautiful illustrations of the apostrophe.

Vision is a figure of rhetoric by which the speaker represents the objects of his imagination as actually before his eyes and present to his senses.