Figures of Speech 5

17. Pun -- A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
Like some other figures of speech, puns in an original language usually do not translate well into the receiver language. One that is noticable in Greek and English is found in Philippians 3:2-3: Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision [katatome, to cut up, mutilate]. For we are the circumcision [peritome], which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

According to David Peters the Hebrew of Judges 10:4 has one, which he illustrates thusly: His thirty sons rode around on thirty burros [´ayirim] and lived in thirty boroughs [´ayarim] in Gilead.

18. Simile -- A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
II Peter 3:8 ...one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Song of Solomon 1:14 My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.
Song of Solomon 4:3 Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.

19. Synecdoche -- A figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.
Examples: John 3:16 -- world stands for people; Matthew 10:38 -- cross stands for self-sacrifice.

According to some the distinction between metonymy and synecdoche "is that in metonymy, the exchange is made between two related nouns; in synecdoche, the exchange is made between two related ideas."

20. Understatement -- A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
Perhaps Ruth 2:3 And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech. It reads as if this is merely a fortuitous circumstance, but it draws our focus to the providence of it.

The Top 20 Figures of Speech (17-20)