Read the following lines carefully and identify the figure of speech used:
"Romans, friends, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him"
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Synecdoche
In "lend me your ears", the ears, a part of each listener, stand for the listeners and their attention: Antony is asking the crowd to listen to him. The lines are from Mark Antony's funeral speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
| Option | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| (1) Synecdoche (answer) | Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole, or the whole for a part. | The captain called for all hands on deck before the storm. |
| (2) Enjambment | the running on of a sentence from one line of verse into the next without a pause. Here the first line ends with a semicolon, so the sense does not run on. | The poet uses enjambment when one line flows into the next without a break. |
| (3) Assonance | the repetition of the same vowel sound in nearby words. These lines do not depend on any repeated vowel sound. | The phrase "the rain in Spain" is a common example of assonance. |
| (4) Anagram | a word or phrase made by rearranging the letters of another. It is a word game, not a figure of speech found in these lines. | The word "listen" is an anagram of "silent". |