• object and material from which it’s made

• place and people who live there

• Institution and people who work there

• place for the institution

• place for person

• place for event

• process and result

• substance for form

• object for user

• effect for cause

• action and instrument

The effect is usually in accompanying morphological changes: transposition of categories (abstract - concrete, (in)animate, proper - nominal)

Ex. And watched for the arrival of the guests, when your attention could be spared from plate and bottle. (Tolkien)

Metonymy can be regarded as a kind of ellipsis: its obvious advantage in poetry is its conciseness when the expanded paraphrase seems to fail in capturing the immediacy of superimposed images, the vivid insight, which is characteristic of figurative expression.

The traditional figure of synecdoche is identified with a rule which applies the term for the part to the whole, genus for species and vise versa

Ex. Great trees, bare and silent, stood, rank on rank, with tangled bough and hoary head. (Tolkien)

ANTONOMASIA is a special stylistic usage of proper names in the text.

1. The use of a name, epithet or title instead of a proper mane as Bard, The Swan of Avon for Shakespeare

2. Using a proper noun as a common noun – generically like Casanova. Here we meet token names (tell-tale names), Scrooge, Hamlet

3. The transfer of the proper name upon a common noun connected with it metonymically

4. Nicknaming, when a common noun becomes a contextual proper noun Fatty

5. Usage of a word revealing a character as a name in the story (aptonym): Becky Sharp, Mrs. Newrich

hyperbole (the figure of overstatement), LITOTES (the figure of understatement), and irony are all connected in that in a sense they misrepresent the truth: hyperbole distorts by saying too much, understatement by saying too little, and irony often takes the form of saying or implying the opposite of what one feels to be the case.

H. W. Fowler defines hyperbole as the use of exaggerated terms' for the sake not of deception, but of emphasis'. The proviso that the audience or reader should be aware of the true state of affairs applies to all three figures - otherwise their effect is lost. Translating this into terms of effect, rather than intention, we may say that rhetorical misrepresentation must be accompanied by some evidence that it is not to be taken at its face value. As with metaphor, we usually arrive at the underlying interpretation by rejecting the literal one as unacceptable or incredible in the circumstances.

Exaggeration in colloquial talk is often incredible because at variance with known fact. In other cases, an exaggerated statement is not just incredible in the given situation but in any situation - because outside the bounds of possibility. Hyperbole may be quantitative, qualitative and metaphoric. Hyperbole, like litotes and irony, is frequently concerned with personal values and sentiments. The conversational hyperbole of “I wouldn't go through that door for a million pounds” is of similar effect. The intention of the speaker is to tell us that however big the inducement, he would stay away: so he thinks of some enormously large figure to represent the maximum. Subjective statements of this kind may seem like exaggerations from the point of view of an onlooker, but from the speaker's viewpoint may be utterly serious.

LITOTES. Whereas hyperbole is a figure which stretches, perhaps almost to breaking point, the communicative resources of the language, it is difficult to see how a failure to say enough about a subject can overstep the bounds of reason or acceptability. The effect of litotes therefore depends a great deal on what we know of the situation. The term 'litotes' is sometimes reserved for a particular kind of understatement in which the speaker uses a negative expression where a positive one would have been more forceful and direct. In so far as they mainly apply to evaluative meaning, hyperbole and litotes serve to colour the expression of personal feelings and opinions, which may be either of a positive or a negative kind (enthusiasm, disgust, etc.). Litotes expresses an overt lack of commitment, and so implies a desire to suppress or conceal one's true attitude; but paradoxically this may, like hyperbole, be a mode of intensification, suggesting that the speaker's feelings are too deep for plain expression. Hyperbole is typically used in eulogy, and litotes in disparagement.

IRONY. linguistic irony, does not so much presuppose a double audience as double response from the same audience.' The basis of irony as applied to language is the human disposition to adopt a pose, or to put on a mask. The notion of a disguise is particularly pertinent, as it brings out [a] the element of concealment in irony, and [b] the fact that what is concealed is meant to be found out. It is also of the essence of irony that it should criticize or disparage under the guise of praise or neutrality. Hence its importance as tool of satire. The 'mask' of approval may be called the overt or direct meaning, and the disapproval behind the mask the covert or oblique meaning. sarcasm consists in saying the opposite of what is intended: saying something nice with the intention that your hearer should understand something nasty. The most valued type of literary irony is that which implies moral or ethical criticism. The kind of nonsense which the writer affects to perpetrate is incredible not because it is factually absurd but because it outrages accepted values.

An innuendo is 'an allusive remark concerning a person or thing, especially of a depreciatory kind'. This definition appears to single out a special kind of ironic statement which is remarkable for what it omits rather than for what it mentions. A woman who declared in court 'My husband has been sober several times in the past five years' might gain a divorce with little difficulty, although her declaration would technically not be an accusation at all. The secret lies in her apparent assumption that drunkenness is the natural and normal state of affairs, and that sobriety is unusual enough for its occurrence to be noted and reckoned. The contrast between overt and covert meanings, can here be traced to a contrast between overt and covert presuppositions: the speaker's eccentric presupposition that drunkenness is the rule and sobriety the exception goes against the normal presupposition that sobriety is the rule and drunkenness the exception.

There is a kind of irony which is a matter of register (especially of tone), rather than of content. As before, let us begin by taking an illustration from the simple ironies of colloquial speech. One type of sarcasm, as noted above, consists in dispraise under the guise of praise. Mock-politeness is also a common feature of the parliamentary and court-room rhetoric. It can also be aimed at a whole class of people, or a whole society; and as such, it is the essence of the mock heroic manner in eighteenth-century poetry.

EPITHET is a trope lexico-syntactical, as far as it has a function of attribute (A silvery laugh), or adverbial modifier (to smile cuttingly), or address (My sweet!).EPITHET is not necessarily of figurative nature but what is obligatory is the presence of emotive or expressive or other connotations in it, due to which is expresses the author's attitude of to the subject. We can speak about an epithet only when it appears in combination with the object defined or phenomena named. Often in the stylistic function of an epithet an adjective and a participle emerge, but there are quite a number of epithets, expressed by nouns.

In spite of that term "epithet" is one of the most ancient terms in stylistics and rhetorics, there is no general definition of it. We will use a short and the most general definition: an EPITHET is a trope, showing an object in the new light.