Their name is known to you but appeals to (too) distant memories?
When, sitting at the back of a classroom, you listened with one ear to what a French teacher was trying to define to a drowsy assembly?
Figures of speech are legion in the words we say on a daily basis.
Often, however, we tend to forget it.
To discover
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As the French Academy reminds us, the figure of speech, derived from the Latin "figura" ("turn"), designates a use or arrangement of words that gives strength or grace to speech.
In other words, it acts on a text in such a way as to amplify, nuance, poetize its meaning, using a set of linguistic processes.
This is the case, for example, when you speak of an “eloquent silence” and an “illustrious unknown”.
These are oxymorons.
Or when you say, “Me alive, you're not going to live there.
Me alive, you will not make this mistake.”
We are here in the presence of an anaphora.
Do you know how to spot the figures of speech that you use on a daily basis?
Do you know the difference between apocope and apheresis?
Does metonymy mean anything to you?
Le Figaro
challenges you to pass this test without fail.