Identify the correct figure of speech used in the following statement.
The anxious chair creaked in the waiting room.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Transferred Epithet
Transferred epithet:
- An epithet is an adjective that describes a quality.
- In a transferred epithet the adjective is shifted from the person who has the feeling to an object connected with that person.
- This sentence: a chair cannot feel anxious; the anxiety belongs to the person waiting in the room, and the adjective "anxious" has been transferred to the chair.
Example: He spent a sleepless night before the interview.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Synecdoche — Incorrect. In synecdoche a part stands for the whole (or the whole for a part); nothing in the sentence stands for something larger or smaller.
Example: The farmer hired more hands for the harvest.
Option 2: Simile — Incorrect. A simile compares two things openly with "like" or "as"; the sentence makes no comparison.
Example: Her smile was as bright as the sun.
Option 4: Personification — Incorrect. Personification makes a non-living thing act or feel like a person. Creaking is an ordinary sound for a chair, and the human feeling is carried by a single adjective borrowed from the person who waits, which is the mark of a transferred epithet.
Example: The wind whispered through the trees.
Contrast: in personification the thing itself acts or feels like a person; in a transferred epithet only an adjective of feeling is moved from the person to a thing connected with that person.