a word or term which achieves more imaginative effects than simple or literal language. Figures of speech are widely used, not only in poetry but in newspapers and newspaper headlines. See alliteration, allusion, antithesis, apostrophe, assonance, euphemism, hyperbole, idiom, innuendo, irony, litotes, malapropism, meiosis, metonymy, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paradox, personification, pun and synecdoche.