Stylistic semasiology

Exercise I. Indicate the type (trite or genuine) and the functions of hyperbole in the following examples:

1. My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people’s.

(O. Wilde)

2. A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. The evening had made me light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a deep sleep as I entered my front door. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. Diana had changed into a black shirt and another long skirt, striped browns and a burnt orange; night and autumn, and done her hair up in a way that managed to seem both classically elegant and faintly disheveled. There was just a tiny air that she was out to kill; and she was succeeding. (J. Fowles)

8. “Deep down he’s just a rather lonely and frightened old man. I don’t think he’d paint anymore if I left. It would kill him. Perhaps even literally.”

(J. Fowles)

9. Next I quietly unlocked the door, looked both ways, slipped along the corridor, pushed open the door of Daniel’s bedroom and nearly jumped out of my skin. (H. Fielding)

10. “Mark,” I said. “If you ask me once more if I’ve read any good books lately I’m going to eat my head. Why don’t you ask me something else?” (H. Fielding)

11. “Anyone got a number for Joanna Trollope?”

There was a long pause. “Er, actually I have,” I said eventually, feeling walls of hate vibes coming from the grunge youths. (H. Fielding)

12. God, stock took bloody ages to do but worth it as will end up with over 2 gallons, frozen in ice-cube form and only cost 1.70 pounds. (H. Fielding)

13. Oh, God, feel awful: horrible sick acidic hangover and today is office disco lunch. Cannot go on. Am going to burst with pressure of unperformed Christmas tasks, like revision for finals. (H. Fielding)

14. “Now. Let. Me. See. D’you know? I think I’ll have a coffee. I’ve had so many cups of tea this morning up in Grafton Underwood with my husband Colin that I’m sick to death of tea…” (H. Fielding)

15. I shot off into loo. Unfortunately, in the dark of taxi, I had applied dark grey Mac eyeshadow to my cheeks instead of bluster: the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, obviously, as packaging identical. When came out of toilets, neatly scrubbed with coat handed in, stopped dead in tracks. Mark was talking to Rebecca. (H. Fielding)

16. They looked perfect together in their black tie. Black tie! As Jude said, was only because Rebecca wanted to show off her figure in Country Casuals gear and evening wear like Miss World entrant. Right on cue she went, “Shall we change into our swimwear now?” and tripped off to change, reappearing minutes later in an immaculately cut black swimsuit, legs up to the chandelier. (H. Fielding)

17. I gave a strangled cry, mind reeling. Surely it cannot be true that men have football instead of emotions? Realize football is exciting and binds nations together with common goals and hatreds but surely wholesale anguish, depression and mourning hours later is taking… (H. Fielding)

18. When Mark Darcy appeared at door lungs got in throat. (H. Fielding)

19. “She is a good woman. A woman of strong mind, good heart and enthusiasm, but maybe ..”

“.. about 400 times too much, sometimes?”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing. Oh, my God, I hope it was just enthusiasm for life he was on about. (H. Fielding)

20. “Hello again,” said a manly voice as Harry started to scream once more. I turned round, dummy in mouth and sick all over hair to find Mark Darcy looking extremely puzzled. (H. Fielding)

21. Barbara: I shouldn’t be surprised. (angrily) They hang them at the drop of a hat in this country. (M. Brand)

22. This morning, I totally got even with him for coming in at one-twenty-three a.m. When he PROMISED, PROMISED, PROMISED he’d be home by midnight. At the LATEST. It was a test and he failed. Again. But instead of screaming at him when h got home, I ignored the whole thing but lay awake all night again, feeling like my head was going to explode, which I am sure it is, one of these days very soon. (C. Bushnell)

23. Now I will show you a quality you have that will help you: You are not blinded by tears, you have the onions to read on. (Th. Harris)

24. Mason Verger, nose less and lipless, with no soft tissue on his face, was all teeth, like a creature of the deep, deep ocean. (Th. Harris)

25. Julian was staring at him in disbelief. Was he trying to play some kind of joke on him? He searched the other man’s face, a slow sensation of sick realization creeping like death along his veins. This was no joke.

(P. Jordan)

26. I’d often cursed Kosti because he was so hard to wake. When we were at the mine I used to have to shake the life out of him to get him up in time to go to work. (W.S. Maugham)

27. You know, it tickles me to death to think that we’re living like quite rich people when really we’re absolutely broke. (W.S. Maugham)

28. If I let Gray have his way he’d spoil them to death. He’d let me starve, that great brute would, to feed the children on caviare and pate de foie gras. (W.S. Maugham)

29. “Are you quite comfortable in that chair?”

“As comfortable as I can be when my head’s giving me hell.”

(W.S. Maugham)

30. I was crazy about aviation. Uncle Bob knew some of the airmen, and when I said I wanted to learn to fly he said he’d fix it for me. I was tall for my age and when I was sixteen I could easily pass for eighteen. Uncle Bob made me promise to keep it a secret, because he knew everyone would be down on him like a ton of bricks for letting me go …

(W.S. Maugham)

Exercise II. In the following examples differentiate between hyperbole and understatement:

1. She had drunk a quantity of champagne, and during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly, that everything was very, very sad – she was not only singing, she was weeping too. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. “… I carry on a little business on the side, a sort of side line, you understand. And I thought that if you don’t make very much – you’re selling bonds, aren’t you, old sport?” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. “I’ve never met so many celebrities,” Daisy exclaimed. “I liked that man – what was his name? – with the sort of blue nose.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. The depression did not at first hit the Riviera badly. I heard of two or three people who had lost a good deal, many villas remained closed for the winter and several were put up for sale. The hotels were far from full and the Casino at Monte Carlo complained that the season was poor. (W.S. Maugham)

6. Instead of wanting to staple things to her head, I merely smiled in a beatific sort of way, thinking how soon all these things were to be immaterial to me, alongside caring for another tiny human being.

(H. Fielding)

7. Marriage is a sort of forcing house. It brings strange sins to fruit, and sometimes strange renunciations. (O. Wilde)

8. Beatrice, by the way, asks herself over to lunch. I half expected she would. I suppose she wants to have a look at you. (D. du Maurier)

9. Here, on this clean balcony, white and impersonal with centuries of sun, I think of half past four at Manderly, and the table drawn before the library fire. (D. du Maurier)

10. And he wants you folks to have a room fixed up and a tree hauled and ready. And such ladies to assist as can stop breathin’ long enough to let it be a surprise for the kids. (O Henry)

11. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. (O. Wilde)

12. For Maggie Brown was said to be the third richest woman in the world; and these solicitous gentlemen were only the city’s wealthiest brokers and business men seeking trifling loans of half a dozen millions or so from the dingy old lady with the prehistoric handbag. (O Henry)

13. I pulled back my arm, clenching my fist, but I was a shade too late.

(J.H. Chase)

14. She had chic to the tips of her rose-painted nails. (W.S. Maugham)

15. He looked at me for a long ten seconds, then his hard face creased into the resemblance of a smile. (J.H. Chase)

16. Daniel fell about laughing when I said I could not programme video.

(H. Fielding)

17. I ran up the stairs and waited till they were safely in the apartment and then I dashed down and got into a taxi. I told the driver to drive like hell and when he asked where I burst out laughing in his face. I felt like a million dollars. (W.S. Maugham)

18. With a furious, despairing energy she rose again and started blindly down the darkness. She must get out. She might be lost in here for days, freeze to death and lie embedded in the ice like corpses she had read of, kept perfectly preserved until the melting of a glacier. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. “Do you take me for a perfect fool, honey? If your mother didn’t know perfectly well the measurements of the living-room windows I’ll eat my hat.” (W.S. Maugham)

20. “Would you like one of these?” said Elaine, holding out a silver case full of Black Sobranies. “I’m sure they’re death on a stick but I’m still here at sixty-five.” (H. Fielding)

21. Just checked fringe again. Hair has gone from fright wig to horrified, screaming, full-blown terror wig. (H. Fielding)

22. She was looking at him with something that was not a smile, rather the faint mirthless echo of a smile, in the corners of her mouth.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise III. Analyze the structure, the semantics and the functions of litotes in the following sentences:

1. Even in actual life egotism is not without its attractions. (O. Wilde)

2. Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one. (O. Wilde)

3. She (Signora Niccolini) was a little stout woman, not without dignity, and she wore a black apron trimmed with lace and a small black lace cap.

(W. S. Maugham)

4. “You know that’s not half a bad idea”. (W.S. Maugham)

5. “Not bad for a woman of forty-six,” – she smiled. (W.S. Maugham)

6. She had in point of fact not troubled to take off her make-up. Her lips were brightly scarlet, and with the reading light behind her she well knew that she did not look her worst. (W.S. Maugham)

7. Her father was remote but not unpleasant. He was just a father, like everybody else’s father. He wasn’t that important. (C. Bushnell)

8. Mason came to understand his role in all of this in the twelfth year of his paralysis, when he was no longer sizeable beneath his sheet and knew that he would never rise again. His quarters at the Muscrat Farm mansion were completed and he had means, but not unlimited means, because the Verger patriarch, Molson, still ruled. (Th. Harris)

9. The exposition of Atrocious Torture Instruments could not fail to appeal to a connoisseur of the worst in mankind. (Th. Harris)

10. Avarice is not unknown in Italy, and Rinaldo Pazzi had imbibed plenty with his native air. (Th. Harris)

11. “It’s hot in here,” she complained, pulling free of him. “I need some fresh air.”

It wasn’t entirely untrue; she was hot and the terrace she could see beyond the ballroom’s open French windows did offer a much needed escape from the cause of that heat. (P. Jordan)

12. “I hope you don’t believe a word she says. Isabel isn’t a bad girl really, but she’s a liar.” (W.S. Maugham)

13. “What on earth does Maxim see in her?” but kind at the same time, not unfriendly. (D. du Maurier)

14. “Are you unhappy?”

“No, not exactly unhappy. When Larry isn’t there I’m all right.”

(W.S. Maugham)

15. I had a notion that just because I was a stranger from a foreign country Larry was not disinclined to talk to me about it. (W.S. Maugham)

16. She was looking me up and down, as I had expected, but in a direct, straightforward fashion, not maliciously like Mrs. Danvers, not without unfriendliness. (D. du Maurier)

17. She didn’t dislike him and so accepted the proposition with placidity. (W.S. Maugham)

18. We have come through our crisis, not unscathed of course.

(D. du Maurier)

19. The brow was cold but the face not expressionless. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. “Too bad – too bad,” said the concierge. “Your grandfather is dead.”

“Not too bad,” said Michael. “It means that I come into a quarter of a million dollars.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise IV. Define the type of metonymic transfer in the following segments:

1. “Did he go?” I asked innocently. “Sure he went.” Mr Wolfsheim’s nose flashed at me indignantly. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. In fact, there is no consensus in the psychiatric community that Dr Lecter should be termed a man. He has long been regarded by his professional peers in psychiatry, many of whom fear his acid pen in the professional journals, as something entirely Other. For convenience they term him ‘monster.’ (Th. Harris)

3. A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books… “Don’t ask me,” said Owl Eyes, washing his hands of the whole matter. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. “Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions”. (O. Wilde)

5. “I am in love with it (picture), Basil. It is part of myself. I feel that.”

“Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself.” (O. Wilde)

6. It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing it.

(Ch. Dickens)

7. The man who had enjoyed his evening and said Molly would be wild at missing it was dressed as a Chinese mandarin, and his false nails got caught up in his sleep as we swung our hands up and down… The mandarin sprung to attention, his hands stiff to his sides. (D. du Maurier)

8. The band was a four-piece job: four well-built negroes: a trumpet, drums, double bass and a saxophone. (J.H. Chase)

9. Earnestly, in French, Mr. Charlton spent some moments explaining to the cold eyes behind the pince-nez the reasons for little Oscar’s immaturity. (H.E. Bates)

10. Only a few uniforms mingled with the dinner coats at the country-club dance. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. Then the swinging doors revolve and three bundles of fur mince in.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. She wondered if those were his dancing-shoes that fox-trotted tentatively around the soft rug below. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. Then curious eyes were turned on her, sitting near the head.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. Yes, I suppose some day I’ll marry a ton of money – out of sheer boredom. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. At the best I can have my choice from one or two cities and, of course, I have to marry into a dinner-coat. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. She went away and he sat there, his mind dulled by the violent sound of the dance music and the impact of the woman singing into the microphone. The power of her lungs was shattering to Western nerves. (J.H. Chase)

17. There were a quick-lunch shack and two barnlike stages, and everywhere about the lot, groups of waiting, hopeful, painted faces. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. In the beer-halls and shop windows were bright posters presenting the Swiss defending their frontiers in 1914 – with inspiring ferocity young men and old men glared down from the mountains at phantom French and Germans; the purpose was to assure the Swiss heart that it had shared the contagious glory of those days. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. “No, it isn’t,” he insisted to the anonymous bundle of fur.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. He walked past the staring carabinieri and up to the grinning face, hit it with a smashing left beside the jaw. The man dropped to the floor.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise V. Define the type of metaphor (trite or genuine) in the following examples and its function in the text:

1. Night court depressed Jennifer. It was filled with a human tide that ceaselessly surged in and out, washed up on the shores of justice.

(S. Sheldon)

2. Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant, whereupon Mr Wolfsheim swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved against the blue limit of the sky. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade… Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. The manior, islanded and sundrenched in its clearing among the sea of huge oaks and beeches, was not quite what he had expected, perhaps because he spoke very little French … (J. Fowles)

9. Breasley shrugged, as if he didn’t care; or was proof to the too direct compliment. Then he darted another quizzing look at David. (J. Fowles)

10. During that tea the relationship seemed more daughterly than anything else. There was only one showing of the lion’s claws. (J. Fowles)

11. Light dawned on him, and he was so surprised that he slowed down. (W.S. Maugham)

12. Towards the end I saw him being harangued by his mother and Una, who marched him over towards me and stood just behind while he said stiffly. (H. Fielding)

13. Ever since I was ten, I worked at putting myself in the path of the oncoming train of destiny. (C. Bushnell)

14. “ALERT, ALERT, REBECCA ALERT,” nuclear-sirened Jude.

(H. Fielding)

9. I could see that Isabel listened to him with growing exasperation. Larry had no notion that he was driving a dagger in her heart and with every detached word twisting it in the wound. (W.S. Maugham)

10. Just went round to Tom’s for top-level summit to discuss the Mark Darcy scenario. (H. Fielding)

11. Pazzi was a Pazzi and above all things ambitious, and he had a young and lovely wife with an ever-open beak. (Th. Harris)

12. The shores of the Mediterranean were littered with royalties from all parts of Europe: some lured there on account of the climate, some in exile, and some because a scandalous part or an unsuitable marriage made it more convenient for them to inhabit a foreign country. (W.S. Maugham)

13. I paused at the French windows, looking around nervously. Heart lurched when located him, standing on his own, in traditional Mark Darcy party mode, looking detached and distant. He glanced towards the door where I was standing and for a second we were locked in each other’s gaze before he gave me a confused nod, then looked away. (H. Fielding)

14. Gray wants to make pots of money. (W.S. Maugham)

Exercise VI. Indicate the structural type of metaphor (simple or prolonged) in the following examples:

1. There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to life. The old are in life’s lumber-room. But youth is the lord of life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile – like most kings. (O. Wilde)

2. The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their way every comedy would have a tragic ending and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. (O. Wilde)

3. The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths – so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. After a little while Mr Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. He (Michael) was not vain of his good looks, he knew he was handsome and accepted compliments, not exactly with indifference, but as he might have accepted a compliment on a fine old house that had been in his family for generations. It was a well-known that it was one of the best houses of its period, one was proud of it and took care of it, but it was just there, as natural to possess as the air one breathed. (W.S. Maugham)

6. Pazzi did not head the Questura investigation division for nothing – he was gifted and in his time he had been driven by a wolfish hunger to succeed in his profession. He also carried the scars of a man who, in the haste and heat of his ambition, once seized his gift by the blade.

(Th. Harris)

7. The English peeresses, having lost their lord, had been forced to surrender their mansions to daughters-in law, and had retired to villas at Cheltenham or to modest houses in Regent’s Park. (W.S. Maugham)

8. “What?” exploded Shazzer. “Have you no concept of the meaning of the word ‘girlfriend’? Bridget’s your best friend joint with me? And Rebecca has shamelessly stolen Mark, and instead of being tactful about it, she’s trying to hoover everyone into her revolting social web so he’s so woven in he’ll never get away…” (H. Fielding)

9. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning a dollar. With false whiskers on, it would serve up cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. By turning the skirt and adding a ruffle of rhyme you would hardly recognize it as vers de societe with neatly shod feet and a fashion plate illustration. (O Henry)

10. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer – there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert the nature – with a full beard and handlebar moustache on each shin, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwelpeter, blind as bat and stupid runt species as no contact lenses, flabby body flobbering about. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence? (H. Fielding)

11. Mrs. Bradley got up from her chair as we came in and Elliot presented me to her. She must have been a handsome woman when young, for her features, though on the large side, were good, and she had fine eyes. But her sallowish face, almost aggressively destitute of make-up, had sagged, and it was plain that she had lost the battle with the corpulence of middle age. I surmised that she was unwilling to accept defeat, for when she sat down she sat very erect in a straight-backed chair which the cruel armour of her corsets doubtless made more comfortable than an upholstered one. (W.S. Maugham)

12. Slowly and inevitably, yet with a sudden surge at the last, while Amory talked and dreamed, war rolled swiftly up the beach and washed the sands where Princeton played. Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoon after platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basket-ball markings. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. ‘I can remember how I stood waiting for you in the garden – holding all my self in my arms like a basket of flowers. It was that to me anyhow – I thought I was sweet – waiting to hand that basket to you.’

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. “Good God,” said Tom when I arrived.

“What?” I said. “What?”

“Your face. You look like Barbara Cartland.”

I started blinking very rapidly, trying to come to terms with the realization that some hideous time-bomb in my skin had suddenly, irrevocably, equined it up. (H. Fielding)

Exercise VII. Discriminate between irony as a trope and ironical attitude of the author in the following examples:

1. “Mrs. Jones,” he said, in his most charming voice. “It’s Daniel here.”

I could practically hear her going all fluttery.

“This is very bright and early on a Sunday morning for a phone call. Yes, it is an absolutely beautiful day. What can we do for you?” (H. Fielding)

2. “Hey, don’t be like that, Bridge,” he said, pulling me back. “You know I think you’re a … an intellectual giant. You just need to learn how to interpret dreams.” (H. Fielding)

3. Mum was brilliant. “Darling,” she said. “Of course, you haven’t woken me up. I’m just leaving for the studio. I can’t believe you’ve got in a state like this over a stupid man. They’re all completely self-centered, sexually incontinent and no use to man nor beast…” (H. Fielding)

4. “How did you sacrifice yourself?”

“I gave Larry up for the one and only reason that I didn’t want to stand in his way.”

“Come off it, Isabel. You gave him up for a square-cut diamond and a sable coat.” (W.S. Maugham)

5. Elliot said he was disappointed with the way his fellow-countrymen had reacted to the depression; he would have expected them to take their misfortune with more equanimity. Knowing that nothing is easier than to bear other people’s calamities with fortitude, I thought that Elliot, richer now than he had ever been in his life, was perhaps hardly entitled to be severe. (W.S. Maugham)

6. I thought I had no heart. I find I have, and a heart doesn’t suit me. Somehow it doesn’t go with modern dress. It makes one look old, and it spoils one’s career at critical moments. (O. Wilde)

7. “He isn’t causing a row,” Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. “You’re causing a row. Please have a little self-control.”

“Self-control!” repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife…” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. Got home to an answer phone message from my mother saying, “Darling, call me immediately. My nerves are shot to ribbons.”

Her nerves are shot to ribbons! (H. Fielding)

9. I suddenly realized cringing, that both Una and Mum must be coming up to their ruby weddings soon. Knowing Mum, it is highly unlikely she will let a trifling detail like leaving her husband and going off with a tour operator stand in the way of the celebrations and will be determined not to be outdone by Elaine Darcy at whatever price, even the sacrifice of a harmless daughter to an arranged marriage. (H. Fielding)

10. In the library, which was to be Gray’s den, he had been inspired by a room in the Amalienburg Palace at Munich, and except that there was no place in it for books it was perfect. (W.S. Maugham)

11. Trembling I took the card from the envelope.

“Who’s it from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, in the sort of calm, smiley way that suggests someone is about to pull out a meat hatchet and cut your nose off.

(H. Fielding)

12. “I’m Dr Hollingsworth – medical examiner, hospital pathologist, chief cook and bottle washer.” Hollingsworth has bright blue eyes, shiny as well-peeled eggs. (Th. Harris)

13. “Ah, Bridget,” he said in a stiff, military-style voice. “Will you speak to your mother on the land-line? Seems to have got herself worked up into a bit of a state?”

She was in a state? Didn’t they care about me at all? Their own flesh and blood? (H. Fielding)

14. Indeed, so devoted was the rich Miller to little Hans, that he would never go by his garden without leaning over the wall and plucking a large nosegay, or a handful of sweet herbs, or filling his pockets with plums and cherries if it was the fruit season. (O Henry)

15. “Why, if little Hans came up here, and saw our warm tire, and our good supper, and our great cask of red wine, he might get envious, and envy is a most terrible thing, and would spoil anybody’s nature. I certainly will not allow Hans’s nature to be spoiled. I am his best friend.” (O Henry)

16. “There is no good in my going to see little Hans as long as the snow lasts,” the Miller used to say to his wife, “for when people are in trouble they should be left alone, and not be bothered by visitors. That at least is my idea about friendship, and I am sure I am right. So I shall wait till the spring comes, and then I shall pay him a visit, and he will be able to give me a large basket of primroses, and that will make him so happy.”

“You are certainly very thoughtful about others,” answered the Wife.

(O Henry)

17. My elder brother won’t die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else. (O. Wilde)

18. “‘Twas a great picture, most of them agreed, admiring the gilt frame larger than any they had ever seen.” (O Henry)

19. At that time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of selling walking canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it up to your mouth a half pint of good rye whisky would go trickling down your throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. (O Henry)

20. “I’ve no kith or kin,” says she, “except a husband and a son or two…”

(O Henry)

Exercise VIII. Define the stylistic purpose of personification in the following examples:

1. The popular cry of our time is: “Let us return to Life and Nature, they will recreate Art for us and send the red blood coursing through her veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong.” But, alas! We are mistaken in our amiable and well-meant efforts. Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste her house. (O. Wilde)

2. Nature is no great mother who has born us. She is our own creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them and what we see and how we see depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees beauty. (O. Wilde)

3. Nature hates mind. (O. Wilde)

4. Facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history but they are usurping the domain of fancy and have invaded the kingdom of romance. Their chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarizing mankind. (O. Wilde)

5. On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Verger,’ Starling said into the darkness, the overhead light hot on the top of her head. Afternoon was someplace else. Afternoon did not enter here. (Th. Harris).

7. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. (D. du Maurier)

8. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20 the letters of “Dillingham” looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. (O Henry)

9. While I slept my problems and my fears sat at the foot of the bed, waiting to greet me when I awake. (J.H. Chase)

10. Money made this country, built its great and glorious cities, created its industries, covered it with an iron network of railroads. It’s money that harnesses the forces of Nature, creates the machine and makes it go when money says go, and stop when money says stop. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. If Evylyn’s beauty had hesitated in her early thirties it came to an abrupt decision just afterward and completely left her. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. The invitation to Miss Myra St. Claire’s bobbing party spent the morning in his pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dusty piece of peanut brittle. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. Amory liked Louisville and Memphis best: these knew how to meet strangers, furnished extraordinary punch, and flaunted an astonishing array of feminine beauty. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. Then tragedy’s emerald eyes glared suddenly at Amory over the edge of June. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. After a while the coat of clean white paint on the Jeffrey Curtain house made a definite compromise with the suns of many Julys and showed its good faith by turning grey. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. If the original genius of the family had grown a little tired, Franz would without doubt become a fine clinician. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghost-like through the curtains… (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. A high sun with a face traced on it beat fierce on the straw hats of the children. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. His glance fell soft and kind upon hers, suggesting an emotion underneath; their glances married suddenly, bedded, strained together.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. I collect together every single photo album in the flat, and the small suitcase filled with photos that lives under the bed and I bring them all into the living room. (M. Gayle)

Exercise IX. Characterize the type (non-figurative; figurative; metaphoric; metonymic; ironic; euphemistic) and function of periphrasis in the following fragments:

1. When a woman finds out that her husband is absolutely indifferent to her, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman’s husband has to pay for. (O. Wilde)

2. No man is able who is unable to get on, just as no woman is clever who can’t succeed in obtaining that worst and most necessary of evils, a husband. (O. Wilde)

3. When you are in love with a married man you shouldn’t wear mascara.

(S. Sheldon)

4. Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. (R. Reagan)

5. “Yeah.” He (Mr Wolfsheim) flipped his sleeves up under his coat. “Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife.” When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down Mr Wolfsheim drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at some time, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. Cody was fifty years then … The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. Then they sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour, while at her request, I remained watchfully in the garden. “In case there’s a fire, or a flood,” she explained, “or any act of God.”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

9. “I should like to introduce you to Miss Lambert,” said Michael. Then with the air of an ambassador presenting an attaché to the sovereign of the court to which he is accredited: “This is the gentleman who is good enough to put some order into the mess we make of our accounts.”

(W.S. Maugham)

10. “I’ve already got a bag.”

“Oh, darling, you can’t go around with that tatty green canvas thing.”

(H. Fielding)

11. She seemed to manage to kiss me, get my coat off, hang it over the banister, wipe her lipstick off my cheek and make me feel incredibly guilty all in one movement, while I leaned against the ornament shelf for support. (H. Fielding)

12. He looked over at me briefly, with the expression of an axe-murderer.

(H. Fielding)

13. Eventually we gave up to retire to our room for a hot bath and Codis, discovering en route that another couple were to be sharing the non-wedding party dining room with us that evening, the female half of which was a girl called Eileen… (H. Fielding)

14. “I don’t think much of the girlfriend, do you?” said Una Alconbury loudly, nodding in Natasha’s direction as soon as she got me alone. “Very much the Little Madam. Elaine thinks she’s desperate to get her feet under the table…” (H. Fielding)

15. I feel like ringing Daniel in hope he could deny everything, come up with plausible explanation for the clothes-free rooftop valkyrie – younger sister, friendly neighbour recovering from flood or similar – which would make everything all right. (H. Fielding)

16. Jude arrived in vixen-from-hell fury because Vile Richard had stood her up for the Relationship Counselling.

“Why didn’t he turn up? I hope the sadistic worm had a decent excuse,” said Sharon. (H. Fielding)

17. Malcolm and Elaine. Begetters of the over-perfect Mark Darcy.

(H. Fielding)

18. He was having a crisis of confidence. (H. Fielding)

19. Just returned from the hideous middle-class Singleton guilt experience at supermarket, standing at checkout next to functional adults with children buying beans, fish fingers, alphabetti spaghetti, etc. (H. Fielding)

20. Just opened pan. Hoped-for 2-gallon stock taste-explosion has turned into burnt chicken carcasses coated in jelly. (H. Fielding)

21. She went on huffy. “I can’t believe you’re being so mean, darling. After all I’ve done for you. I gave you the gift of life and you can’t even loan your mother a few pounds for some equined cheques.” (H. Fielding)

22. My brother, on the other hand, can come and go as he likes with everyone’s respect and blessing just because he happens to be able to stomach living with a vegan Tai Chi enthusiast. (H. Fielding)

23. Mum went into her slow, kindly ‘let’s try to make best friends with the waiting staff and be the most special person in the café for no fathomable reason’ voice. (H. Fielding)

24. “Listen, I’m in the car. Do you want to come out for supper tonight with Giles?”

“I’ve said I’ll see the girls.”

“Oh Christ. I suppose I’ll be dismembered and dissected and thoroughly analysed.”

“No, you won’t…” (H. Fielding)

25. After panting rush through rain, arrived at 192 to find Magda not arrived yet, thank God, and Jude already in a state, allowing her thinking to get into a Snowball Effect, extrapolating huge dooms from small incidents as specifically warned against in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. (H. Fielding)

26. Hurrah! Everything is lovely. Mark just rang! Slightly suspicious, but he asked me to come to the law thing tomorrow. (the Law Society dinner) (H. Fielding)

27. Starling was suddenly a thirty-three-year-old woman, alone, with a ruined civil service career and no shotgun, standing in a forest at night. She saw herself clearly, saw the crinkles of age beginning in the corners of her eyes. (Th. Harris)

28. “What’s your birth date?” Mrs. Rosencrantz at last parted with the correct information, characterizing it as ‘the date Dr Lecter is familiar with.’

(Th. Harris)

29. “Did you fill the form in last October?” said self-important baggage in ruffly-collared shirt and brooch, enjoying crazed moment of glory just because she happened to be in charge of table in voting station.

(H. Fielding)

30. He took the praise as a greedy boy takes apple pie, and the criticism as a good dutiful boy takes senna-tea. (Lord Macaulay)

31. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with quotations from the operas. (O Henry)

32. His seeing arrangement was gray enough. (O Henry)

33. The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it seems to cover my whole front elevation. (O Henry)

34. The blithesome Phyllis bore her twenty-five summers gaily from the train. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise X. Analyze the following cases of allusion and its function in the text:

1. “You look like some sort of Mary Poppins person who’s fallen on hard times.” (H. Fielding)

2. Cannot believe my mother is not more grateful to Mark Darcy for sorting everything out for her. Instead of which he has become part of That Which Must Not Be Mentioned, i.e. the Great Time-Share Rip-Off, and she behaves as if he never existed. Cannot help but think he must have coughed up a bit to get everyone their money back. Very nice good person. Too good for me, evidently. (H. Fielding)

3. Emergency: Jude on phone in tears. Is coming round. Vile Richard has gone back to Vile Jilly. Jude blames gift. Thank God stayed home. Am clearly Emissary of Baby Jesus here to help those persecuted at Christmas by Herod – Wannabees, e.g. Vile Richard. Jude will be here at 7.30.

(H. Fielding)

4. Maybe will go downstairs, make myself a cup of tea and watch TV in the kitchen. But what if Mark isn’t back and is going out with someone and brings her home and I am like the mad aunt or Mrs Rochester drinking tea? (H. Fielding)

5. “Exactly,” said Vile Richard, towering above us like Bacchus with a bottle of Chardonnay and two packets of Silk Cut. (H. Fielding)

6. That’ll be my boyfriend. You can stand him a drink and then you better scram. He’s a Corsican and as jealous as our old friend Jehovah.

(W.S. Maugham)

7. Don’t know what I would have done without the girls yesterday. Called them instantly after Mark drove off, and they were round within fifteen minutes, never once saying “I told you so.”

When Shazzer bustled in with armfuls of bottles and carrier bags, barking, “Has he rung?” was like being in ER when Dr Green arrives.

“No,” said Jude, popping a cigarette in my mouth as if it were a thermometer. (H. Fielding)

8. “Dee chose it,” Kelly informed him, adding truthfully, “I feel like Cinderella being equipped for the ball by her fairy godmother.”

(P. Jordan)

9. This car had the wings of Mercury I thought, got higher yet we climbed, and dangerously fast, and the danger pleased me because it was new to me, because I was young. (D. du Maurier)

10. I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crows, that they might drop from their beaks the morsels of wit that I coveted.

(O Henry)

11. Now with a life time of knowledge and experience, Mason felt like Stradivarius approaching the worktable as he built the engines of his revenge. (Th. Harris)

12. What a wealth of information and resources Mason had in his faceless skull! Lying in his bed, composing in his mind like the deaf Beethoven, he remembered walking the swine fairs with his father, checking out the competition… (Th. Harris)

13. She looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a face like a Botticelli angel. (D. du Maurier)

14. All married men with lovely wives are jealous, aren’t they? And some of them just can’t help playing Othello. They’re made that way. I don’t blame them. I’m sorry for them. (D. du Maurier)

15. “But they are your problems as well!” she flared. “How are we going to raise the money?”

“That, as Hamlet once said, is the question. Have you any suggestions to make?” (J.H. Chase)

16. Then the wine-glasses succumbed to leg fractures, and even the dinner-glasses disappeared one by one like the ten little niggers, the last one ending up, scarred and maimed, as a tooth brush holder among other shabby genteels on the bathroom shelf. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. He was intensely ritualistic, startlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough to be a celibate, and rather liked his neighbour. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. His glimpse of it as a vivid whiteness against a deep-blue sky had left a picture of splendour that rivaled the dream cities in the Arabian Nights. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. As the swing reached its highest points, Arcady really lay just over the brow of a certain hill, where the brown road dwindled out of sight in golden dot. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. Amory was far from contented. He missed the place he had won at St. Regis’s, the being known and admired, yet Princeton stimulated him, and there were many things ahead calculated to arouse the Machiavelli latent in him, could he but insert a wedge. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

21. How he loved to do any sort of thing with Clara! Shopping with her was a rare, epicurean dream. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

22. “That’s what Stephen must have thought many years ago. But he preached his sermon and they killed him. He probably thought as he was dying what a waste it all was. But, you see, I’ve always felt that Stephen’s death was the thing that occurred to Paul on the road to Damascus, and sent him to preach the word of Christ all over the world.”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

23. “There are some adventurous miners who had the misfortune to discover El Dorado,” he remarked. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise XI. Analyze the following cases of antonomasia. State the type (metaphoric, metonymic, reversed) and indicate additional information created by the use of antonomasia:

1. Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is invariably Judas who writes the biography. (O. Wilde)

2. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances … (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. Inside the long room there was only one example of Breasley’s own work, but plenty else to admire. The landscape was indeed a Derain, as David had guessed. Three very fine Permeke drawings. The Ensor and the Marquet. An early Bonnard. A characteristically febrile pencil sketch, unsigned, but unmistakably Dufy. Then a splendid Jawlensky (how on earth had he got his hands on that?), an Otto Dix signed proof nicely juxtaposed with a Nevinson drawing. Two Matthew Smiths, a Picabia, a little flower painting that must be an early Matisse, though it didn’t look quite right … (J. Fowles)

4. Realize with sinking humiliation that reason have been feeling smug about Peter all these years was that I finished with him and now he is effectively finishing with me by marrying Mrs. Giant Valkyrie Bottom. (H. Fielding)

5. Was bloody good fun, actually. Even started to see the funny side of being stood up by Mr. Perfect Pants Mark Darcy. (H. Fielding)

6. How does Mrs. Smug Married-at-twenty-two think she knows, thank you very much? (H. Fielding)

7. I remember a Monet of people rowing on a river, a Pissaro of a quay and a bridge on the Seine, a Tahitian landscape by Gauguin, and a charming Renoir of a young girl in profile with long yellow hair hanging down her back. (W.S. Maugham)

8. “You’ve got a Titian, haven’t you?” (W.S. Maugham)

9. So I assumed an air that mingled Solomon’s with that of the general passenger agent of the Long Island Railroad. (O Henry)

10. “Well,” he inquired, blinking cheerily, “How’s Carmen from the South?” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. John lay quietly as his pajamas were removed – he was amused and delighted; he expected to be lifted like a child by this black Gargantua who was tending him, but nothing of the sort happened.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. In the proper land and century he might have been a Richelieu – at present he was a very moral, very religious (if not particularly pious) clergyman, making a great mystery about pulling rusty wires, and appreciating life to the fullest, if not entirely enjoying it. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. “Did you ever read Stephen Phillips, or do you like poetry?”

“Yes, indeed”, Armory affirmed eagerly. “I’ve never read much of Phillips, though.” (He had never heard of any Phillips except the late David Graham.) (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. This called mild twitters among the other freshmen, who called them ‘Doctor Johnson and Boswell.’ (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. “Wake up, Original Sin, and scrape yourself together!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. Burne left in a quietly dramatic manner a week later. He sold all his possessions and came down to the room to say good-bye, with a battered old bicycle, on which he intended to ride his home in Pennsylvania.

“Peter the Hermit bidding farewell to Cardinal Richelieu,” suggested Alec, who was lounging in the window-seat as Burne and Amory shook hands. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. Roxanne Milbank was a Venus of the hansom cab, the Gibson girl in her glorious prime. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. I might be a really great dictator or writer or religious or political leader – and now even a Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldn’t be a real old-fashioned bolt in the world. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. You, Tom d’Invilliers, a blighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, represent the critical consciousness of the race.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. “Miss Television,” he said with a lightness he did not feel.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise XII. State the structural and semantic type of epithets in the following examples. Define their function:

1. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. “Perhaps you know that lady,” Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white-plum tree.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. Then she remembered the heat and sat down guiltily on the couch just as a freshly laundered nurse leading a little girl came into the room.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. She hesitated a moment, as if she knew she was being too cool and sibylline. There was even a faint hint of diffidence, a final poor shadow of a welcoming smile. (J. Fowles)

6. Again the Freak talked most, she was funny about her hair-raisingly bigoted parents, her variously rebellious brothers and a younger sister, the hell of a childhood and adolescence in the back streets of Acton.

(J. Fowles)

7. The dew was heavy and pearled. (J. Fowles)

8. She gave him another stab of a look. (J. Fowles)

9. They heard Michael come whistling along the passage, and when he came into the room Dolly turned to him with her great eyes misty with tears. (W.S. Maugham)

10. At dinner Magda had placed me, in an incestuous-sex-sandwich sort of way, between Cosmo and Jeremy’s crashing bore of a brother. (Helen Fielding)

11. It was a disaster of a trip, anyway. (H. Fielding)

12. Daniel stared at me, ashen-faced. (H. Fielding)

13. Then suddenly as I glanced across at the divine young whippersnappers, with the cashpoint machine in the background, the germ of an extremely morally suspect idea began to form itself in my mind. (H. Fielding)

14. Blimey, must hurry. About to go on date with Diet Coke-esque young whippersnapper. (H. Fielding)

15. The testosterone-crazed fans do not wish themselves on the pitch, instead seeing their team as their chosen representatives, rather like parliament. (H. Fielding)

16. Returned from work to icy answer phone message. (H. Fielding)

17. I quickly told Shazzer about pre-law party programme, but when told her about fitness assessment she seemed to spit down the telephone:

“Don’t do it,” she warned in a sepulchral whisper. (H. Fielding)

18. Actually really think whole personality is undergoing seismic change.

(H. Fielding)

19.“Thank you, but I have my own mobile, Brough,” Kelly told him frostily. (P. Jordan)

21. “If I find out you’ve so much as even tried to speak to her again, I promise you you’re going to regret it,” he told Julian in a steely voice.

(P. Jordan)

22. “What are you wearing?” “I’m having it made. Abe Hamilton! Lace and lots of cleavage.” “What cleavage?” muttered Shaz murderously.

(H. Fielding)

23. There was a cavernous silence round the table. (H. Fielding)

24. Mark listened quietly and thoughtfully. “I take your point, Bridget,” he said. “But this is the nursery slope. It’s practically horizontal.”

(H. Fielding)

25. “Okey-dokey, whatever, have a fun time,” she said, flashed the toothpaste advert smile, then put her goggles on and skied off with a flourish towards the town. (H. Fielding)

26. It was a dream of a dress, she acknowledged ten minutes later as she carefully hung it on a padded hanger. A dream of a dress for what could turn out to be a nightmare of an evening. (P. Jordan)

27. Before the nurse could ring, or reach for medication, the first coarse bristles of Mason’s revenge brushed his pale and seeking, ghost crab of a hand, and began to calm him. (Th. Harris)

28. When he returns to the boat, water streaming off his dive skin (which shows all the muscles in his body, including his washboard stomach), Dianna and I are laughing and drinking champagne as if nothing in the world is wrong. (C. Bushnell)

29. Krendler was the icon of failure and frustration. He could be blamed. But what could he be defied? Or was Krendler, and every other authority and taboo, empowered to box Starling into what was, in Dr Lecter’s view, her little low-ceiling life? (Th. Harris)

30. He came several times and he thought it quite an adventure when they asked him to have a luncheon with them which was cooked and served by a scarecrow of a woman whom they called Evie. (W.S. Maugham)

31. We boarded with a snuff-brown lady named Chica, who kept a rum-shop and a ladies’ and gents’ restaurant. (O Henry)

Exercise XIII. Comment on the structural peculiarities of simile in the following examples:

1. A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away. (W. Wycherley)

2. How marriage ruins a man! It’s as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive. (O. Wilde)

3. “Mark!” said Una, as if she was one of Santa Claus’s fairies. “I’ve got someone nice for you to meet.” (H. Fielding)

4. His features had a worn distinction. He reminded you of a head on an old coin that had been in circulation too long. (W.S. Maugham)

5. For the first two hours this morning I kept staring at my handbag as if it were an unexploded bomb. (H. Fielding)

6. I thought Daniel was going to hit him. I found myself stroking his arm murmuring, “Ok now, easy, easy,” as if he were a racehorse that had been frightened by a van. (H. Fielding)

7. Her painting was vaporous and unsubstantial, but it had a flowerlike grace and even a certain careless elegance. (W.S. Maugham)

8. He was that kind of man – solid, dependable, reassuring, as comfortable as a familiar solid arm-chair, with the kind of down-to earth, healthy good looks that typified a certain type of very English male. (P. Jordan)

9. “Bridget, self-help books are not a religion.”

“But they are! They are a new form of religion. It’s almost as if human beings are like streams of water so when an obstacle is put in their way, they bubble up and surge around to find another path.” (H. Fielding)

10. I poured him a glass of Chardonnay and brought it to him in manner of James Bond-style hostess saying, with a calming smile, “Supper won’t be long.”

“Oh my God,” he said, looking around terrified as if there might be Far Eastern militia hiding in the microwave. “Have you cooked?”

(H. Fielding)

11. I am not going to spend another evening being danced about in front of Mark Darcy like a spoonful of pureed turnip in front of a baby.

(H. Fielding)

12. His America will be as remote from your America as the Gobi desert. (W.S. Maugham)

13. When finally arrived at Guildhall, Mark was pacing up and down outside in black tie and big overcoat.

“Sorry, I’m late,” I said breathlessly.

“You’re not,” he said, “I lied about the kick-off.” He looked at me again in a strange way.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said over-calmly and pleasantly, as if I were a lunatic standing on a car holding an axe in one hand and his wife’s head in the other. (H. Fielding)

14. I am aging prematurely, I realized. Like a time-release film of a plum turning into a prune. (H. Fielding)

15. On top of everything else, hair has gone mad as if in sympathy. Bizarre the way that hair is normal for weeks on end then suddenly in space of five minutes goes berserk, announcing it is time to cut in manner of baby starting yelling to be fed. (H. Fielding)

16. Marriage is supposed to make you happy, not make you feel like a rat trapped in a very glamorous cage with twenty-thousand-dollar silk draperies. (C. Bushnell)

17. Hubert looks at me, but somehow, miraculously, I don’t react (much as a prisoner brought into an enemy camp knows not to react), and Hubert reaches out and takes my hand… (C. Bushnell)

18. She gave me the rather absurd notion of a pear, golden and luscious, perfectly ripe and simply asking to be eaten. (W.S. Maugham)

19. Then the spring came… It was spring all right, but it seemed to come shyly in that grim and sordid landscape as though unsure of a welcome. It was like a flower, a daffodil or a lily, growing in a pot on the window-sill of a slum dwelling and you wondered what it did there. (W.S. Maugham)

20. Afterwards I thought I’d better go home: what with Natasha watching my every move as if she were a crocodile and I was getting a bit near to her eggs, and me having given Mark Darcy my address and phone number and having fixed to see him next Tuesday. (H. Fielding)

21. He accepted the bill the way a hungry tiger accepts a chunk of meat, then he stared blankly at me, shifted his gaze to door 28, then softly backed away. (J.H. Chase)

Exercise XIV. Differentiate between cases of simile and logical comparison in the following fragments:

1. She looks like an edition de luxe of a wicked French novel meant specially for the English market. (O. Wilde)

2. A communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up. (W. Churchill)

3. Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there’s always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires. (M. Cox)

4. It is typical of the new louche health club culture that personal trainers are allowed to behave like doctors without any sort of Hippocratic oath.

(H. Fielding)

5. Wellington, far from being a tragic victim of cultural imperialism, looked coolly at home in one of Dad’s 1950s suits as if he might have been one of the waiters from the Met Bar on his night off, responding with dignified graciousness while Mum and Una twittered around him like groupies. (H. Fielding)

6. Then she allowed herself to smile. Her smile was like a child’s that knows it’s been naughty, but thinks it can wheedle you but its ingenuous charm not to be cross. (W.S. Maugham)

7. That evening I went to dine at a great stone house on Lake Shore Drive which looked as though the architect had started to build a medieval castle and then, changing his mind in the middle, had decided to turn it into a Swiss chalet. (W.S. Maugham)

8. When the pathologist spotted Starling over the shoulder of his assistant, he dumped the brain into the open chest cavity of the corpse, shot his rubber gloves into a bin like a boy shooting rubber bands and came around the table to her. (Th. Harris)

9. I so wish that we could talk about these things openly. I really did believe, when we first got married, that we would talk about everything honestly, but the opposite has occurred: We’re like two people on separate islands, with only tin cans and string as a means of communication. (C. Bushnell)

10. “Girls,” said Jude over-pleasantly, like a gym mistress about to make us stand in the corridor in our gym knickers, “can we get on?” (H. Fielding)

11. Natasha was so tall and thin she hadn’t felt the need to put heels on, so could walk easily across the lawn without sinking, as if designed for it, like camel in the desert. (H. Fielding)

12. One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks – at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: “You promised!” into his ear. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. An evening with Rebecca is like swimming in sea with jellyfish: all will be going along perfectly pleasantly then suddenly you get painful lashing, destroying confidence at stroke. Trouble is, Rebecca’s strings are aimed so subtly at one’s Achilles’ heels, like Gulf War missiles going ‘Fzzzzzz whoossssh’ through Baghdad hotel corridors, that never see them coming. (H. Fielding)

14. It was all new to me and I was confused and excited. I was like someone who’s lain awake in a darkened room and suddenly a chink of light shoots through the curtains and he knows he only has to draw them and there the country will be spread before him in the glory of the dawn.

(W.S. Maugham)

15. Margot was putting up the currycombs and some hackamores. Her hair was paler than the hay, her eyes as blue as the inspection stamp on meat. (Th. Harris)

16. I forced a smile, and did not answer him, aware now of a stab of panic, an uneasy sickness that could not be controlled. Gone was my glad excitement, vanished my happy pride. I was like a child brought to her first school, or a little untrained maid who has never left home before, seeking a situation. (D. du Maurier)

17. “You look like a five-year-old in your mother’s make-up,” he said. “Look.” (H. Fielding)

18. Was my mother, walking into my café bold as brass in a Country Casuals pleated skirt and apple-green blazer with shiny gold buttons, like a spaceman turning up in the House of Commons squirting slime and sitting itself down calmly on the front bench. (H. Fielding)

19. While I drove, fear like a misshapen gnome, sat silently on my shoulder. (J.H. Chase)

20. A little after midnight, Dolores Lane came in and stood holding a microphone the way a drowning man hangs on to a lifebelt. (J.H. Chase)

21. They stared at me the way a Masonic gathering would stare if a bubble dancer had dropped into the middle of one of their most mystic rituals. (J.H. Chase)

22. They eased me through as if I were a millionaire invalid with four days to live and who hadn’t as yet paid his doctor’s bill. (J.H. Chase)

Exercise XV. Indicate the type (trite, genuine) and the functions of simile in the following examples:

1. Women are like minors, they live upon their expectations. (O. Wilde)

2. Faith is the most plural thing I know. We are all supposed to believe in the same thing in different ways. It is like eating out of the same dish with different coloured spoons. (O. Wilde)

3. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. (G. Steinem)

4. I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress – and as drunk as a monkey. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. Traffic is like a bad dog. It isn’t important to look both ways when crossing the street. It’s important to not show fear. (P. J. O’Rourke)

6. They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set him down in a chair, and came back. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. ‘He was a god, my dear,’ she told me. ‘He was immensely tall, as tall as the Eiffel Tower, with great broad shoulders and a magnificent chest… ’ (W.S. Maugham)

9. Christmas is like war. Going down to Oxford street is hanging over me like going over the top. Wish that the Red Cross or Germans would come and find me. (H. Fielding)

10. I stood there frozen to the spot, feeling like an enormous pudding in the bridesmaid dress. (H. Fielding)

11. English society is as dead as the dodo. (W.S. Maugham)

12. One’s having fun, and one thinks he’s just like on of us, just like everybody else, and then suddenly you have the feeling that he’s escaped you like a smoke ring that you try to catch in your hands.

(W.S. Maugham)

13. Any day he may vanish like a shadow when the sun goes in and we may not see him again for years. (W.S. Maugham)

14. To Sally Carrol this shortening of her name was like presenting her to the public half clothed. (F Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. Starling felt pierced and lonesome in this goat smelling surveillance van crowded with men. Chaps, Brut, Old Spice, sweat and leather. She felt some fear, and it tasted like a penny under her tongue. (Th. Harris)

16. The sea’s as flat as the back of my mind. (D. du Maurier)

17. The gulls wheeled overhead, mewing like hungry cats. (D. du Maurier)

18. The fellow lost his head and jumped for it apparently when the ship struck. We found him clinging on to one of the rocks here under the cliff. He was soaked to the skin of course and shaking like a jelly. Couldn’t speak a word of English of course. Maxim went down to him, and found him bleeding like a pig from a scratch on the rocks. (D. du Maurier)

19. I had a growing feeling that her story wasn’t to be trusted. She was frightened out of her wits and, like a trapped animal, she thought only of escape and she would stop at nothing to save herself. (J.H. Chase)

20. When Wiese walked out on the porch an hour later, Henry saw that his pale lips were like chalk. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise XVI. Define the function of quasi-identity in the following sentences:

1. Courtship to marriage, is a very witty prologue to a very dull play.

(W. Congreve)

2. Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she’s a householder.

(Th. Wilder)

3. Punctuality is the thief of time. (O. Wilde)

4. Circumstances are the lashes laid on to us by life. Some of us have to receive them with bared ivory backs, and others are permitted to keep on a coat – that is the only difference. (O. Wilde)

5. Divorce is to the practice of law what proctology is to the practice of medicine. (S. Sheldon)

6. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. (O. Wilde)

7. Their (gluttons’) kitchen is their shrine, the cook their priest, the table their altar, and their belly their god. (Ch. Buck)

8. Understanding is a two-way street. (E. Roosevelt)

9. A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent. (L. P. Smith)

10. After 45 minutes of staring blankly at the computer trying to pretend Perpetua was a Mexican cheeseplant whenever she asked me what was the matter, I bolted and went out to a phone booth to ring Sharon.

(H. Fielding)

11. When one is in love, and things go all wrong, one’s terribly unhappy and one thinks one won’t ever get over it. But you’ll be astounded to learn what the sea will do. Love isn’t a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You’ll be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable. (W.S. Maugham)

12. Then I resolved serenely to tell no one, as gossip is a virulent spreading poison. (H. Fielding)

13. Sensations are the details that build up the stories of our lives. (O. Wilde)

14. You should never try to understand women. Women are pictures, men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means – which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do – look at her, don’t listen to her. (O. Wilde)

15. There are not true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water. (A. Clark)

16. Big dictionaries are nothing but storerooms with infrequently visited and dusty corners. (R. W. Bailey)

17. Ice was a ghost, and this mansion of it was surely peopled by those shades of the eighties, with pale faces and blurred snow-filled hair.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. But he clearly did not want to talk about them; as if they were mere moths around his candle, a pair of high – class groupies. (J. Fowles)

19. There is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine paradox. The pun is the clown among jokes, the well-turned paradox is the polished comedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour. Our minds are shot with moods as a fabric is shot with colours, and our moods often seem inappropriate. Everything that is true is inappropriate. (O. Wilde)

20. Words are chameleons, which reflect the colour of their environment. (Learned Hand)

Exercise XVII. Discriminate between cases of synonymous replacements and synonymous specifiers in the following fragments:

1. There are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life fully, entirely, completely, or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. (O. Wilde)

2. The truth isn’t quite the sort of thing that one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. (O. Wilde)

3. The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society. (O. Wilde)

4. Sharon was on top form. ‘Bastards!’ she was already yelling by 8.35, pouring three-quarters of a glass of Kir Royale straight down her throat. “Stupid, smug, arrogant, manipulative, self-indulgent bastards.”

(H. Fielding)

5. His great fortune melted and one night he had a heart attack. He was in his sixties; he had always worked hard, played hard, eaten too much, and drunk heavily; after a few hours of agony he died of coronary thrombosis. (W.S. Maugham)

6. In all big cities there are self-contained groups that exist without intercommunication, small worlds within a greater world that lead their lives, their members dependent upon one another for companionship, as though they inhabited islands separated from each other by an unnavigable strait. Of no city, in my experience, is this true than of Paris. There high society seldom admits outsiders into its midst, the politicians live in their own corrupt circle, the bourgeoisie, great and small, frequent one another, writers congregate with writers, painters hobnob with painters and musicians with musicians. (W.S. Maugham)

7. “I don’t need anyone in my life because they owe it to me,” I went on determinedly. “I have got the best, most loyal, wise, witty, caring, supportive friends in the world…” (H: Fielding)

8. There was a stunned silence. Pretentious Jerome had committed a vicious, selfish, unforgivable, ego-destroying crime against all the laws of dating decency. (H: Fielding)

9. “I’ve got a job of work to finish here and then I shall go back to America.”

“What to do?”

“Live.”

“How?”

“With calmness, forbearance, compassion, selflessness, and continence.” (W.S. Maugham)

10. Manderley is no more. It lies like an empty shell amidst the tangle of the deep woods, even as I saw it in my dream. A multitude of weeds, a colony of birds. (D. du Maurier)

11. The smile comprehended Montenegro’s troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro’s warm little heart. My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. Sir Alexander Heathcote, as well as being a gentleman, was an exact man. He was exactly sit-foot-three and a quarter inches tall, rose at seven o’clock every morning, joined his wife at breakfast to eat one boiled egg cooked for precisely four minutes, two pieces of toast with one spoonful of Cooper’s marmalade, and drink one cup of China tea. He would then take a hackney carriage from his home in Cadogan Gardens at exactly eight-twenty and arrive at the Foreign Office at promptly eight-fifty-nine, returning home again on the stroke of six o’clock. (J. Archer)

13. I should never have thought him capable of expressing himself with such dignity, real feeling, and simplicity, had I not long known that notwithstanding his snobbishness and his absurd affectations Elliot was a kindly, affectionate, and honest man. (W.S. Maugham)

14. Dear Daddy, are you still harping on that scholarship? I never knew a man so obstinate and stubborn and unreasonable, and tenacious, and bull-doggish, and unable-to-see-other-people’s-points-of-view as you. (J. Webster)

15. Their great warm faces looked down upon me from the mantelpiece, they floated in a bowl upon the table by the sofa, they stood, lean and graceful, on the writing-desk beside the golden candlesticks. (D. du Maurier)

16. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under the constantly changing light. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. That was the thing that kept me from sleeping: the picture of her lifting her thick, chestnut-coloured hair off her white shoulders, the young fresh beauty of her, and the realization that she was Aitken’s wife and the burning need I felt for her. It was that picture that kept my mind feverish and stopped me from sleeping. (J.H. Chase)

18. I think you are a cheat. I know you are a liar. I am equally sure you are in need of money for some reason best known to yourself, and I am certain you’re not going to get it from me. (J.H. Chase)

19. For one thing, it went totally against all her principles and, for another, how on earth was she supposed to give Julian Cox the impression that she found him attractive and desirable enough to want to break up his relationship with someone else when the truth was that she found him loathsome, reptilian and repulsive? (P. Jordan)

20. Doctor Dohmler saw that there were tears in the corners of his eyes and noticed for the first time that there was whiskey on his breath.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise XVIII. Indicate the type of climax. Differentiate between climax and anticlimax:

1. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. (O. Wilde)

2. I am not quite sure that I quite know what pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next. (O. Wilde)

3. Jennifer Parker was not only on the evening news – she was the evening news. (S. Sheldon)

4. If we live for aims we blunt our emotions. If we live for aims we live for one minute, for one day, for one year, instead of for every minute, every day, every year. The moods of one’s life are life’s beauties. To yield to all one’s moods is to really live. (O. Wilde)

5. “Bridge? Last night even before this happened I’d started to feel as though things weren’t right.”

Felt cold clunk of dread in stomach. Which was ironic really considering had been thinking things weren’t right myself. But really, it is all very well you yourself thinking things aren’t right in a relationship, but if the other person starts doing it is like someone else criticizing your mother. Also it starts you thinking you are about to be chucked, which, apart from pain, loss, heartbreak etc. is very humiliating. (H. Fielding)

6. The more he learned her, the more he watched her, the more he liked her; as temperament, as system of tastes and feelings, as female object.

(J. Fowles)

7. “Is it a beauty contest or a fancy dress contest?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know, no one knows,” said Tom, throwing down his headdress – a miniature tree which he was intending to set alight during the contest. “It’s both. It’s everything. Beauty. Originality. Artistry. It’s all ridiculously unclear.” (H. Fielding)

8. It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth or power but the pursuit of attainable goals: and what is a diet if not that?

(H. Fielding)

9. Oh, God, I’m so depressed. I thought I’d found something I was good at for once and now it’s all ruined, and on top of everything else it is the horrible ruby wedding party on Saturday and I have nothing to wear. I’m no good at anything. Not men. Not social skills. Not work. Nothing.

(H. Fielding)

10. On both sides of her along the walls she felt things creeping, damp souls that haunted this palace, this town, this North. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. Little things, meaningless and stupid in themselves, but there were there for me to see, for me to hear, for me to feel. (D. du Maurier)

12. “Of course I’m happy,” I said, “I love Manderley, I love the garden, I love everything.” (D. du Maurier)

13. “Oh, send somebody – send somebody!” she cried aloud. Clark Darrow – he would understand; or Joe Ewing; she couldn’t be left here to wander forever – to be frozen, heart, body, and soul. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. When I’m with him, I don’t feel … significant. I want to be everything to him. I want to be essential. I want him to be unable to live without me, but how can I be these things if he won’t let me? (C. Bushnell)

15. “Where are we going?” I burst out.

“Your flat. Why?” he said, looking around in alarm.

“Exactly. Why?” I said furiously. “We’ve been going out for four weeks and six days. And we’ve never stayed at your house. Not once. Not ever! Why?” (H. Fielding)

16. Passion is destructive. And if it doesn’t destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one’s life, that one’s brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one’s expended all one’s tenderness, poured out all the riches of one’s soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one’s dreams, who wasn’t worth a stick of chewing gum. (W.S. Maugham)

17. “Do you love him very much?”

“I don’t know. I’m impatient with him. I’m exasperated with him. I keep longing for him.” (W.S. Maugham)

18. “I keep it (the house) always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things. Celebrated people.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. Say yes. If you don’t I’ll break into tears. I’ll sob. Ill moan. I’ll growl. (Th. Smith)

20. You know – after so many kisses and promises, the lie given to her dreams, her words … the lie given to kisses – hours, days, weeks, months of unspeakable bliss (Th. Dreiser)

21. “Be careful,” said Mr. Jingle. “Not a look. Not a wink,” said Mr. Tupman. “Not a syllable. Not a whisper.” (Ch Dickens)

22. “Whatever you say is always right,” cried Harriet, “and therefore I suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so…” (J. Austen)

23. I have never seen any rich people. Very often I have thought that I had found them. But it turned out that it was no so. They were not rich at all. They were quite poor. They were hard up. They were pushed for money. They didn’t know where to turn for ten thousand dollars. (S. Leacock)

24. Three are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. (B. Disraeli)

25. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, “so terribly, terribly sorry.” (D. du Maurier)

26. “But I love you – or adore you – or worship you – ” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise XIX. Analyze the following cases of pun. Study the semantic mechanism of pun:

1. Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change. (O. Wilde)

2. Charity: a thing that begins at home, and usually stays there. (E. Hubbard)

3. The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run.

(J. Barrymore)

4. Diana Manners has no heart but her brains are in the right place.

(C. Asquith)

5. “Do you need driving back to London? I’m staying here but I could get my car to take you.”

“What, all on its own?” I said.

He blinked at me.

“Durr! Mark has a company car and a driver, silly,” said Una.

(H. Fielding)

6. “Give it to me,” said Mark.

“No!” I said, grabbing the phone back and hissing, “I’m a person in my own right.”

“Of course you are, darling, just not in your own right mind,” murmured Mark. (H. Fielding)

7. Passion doesn’t count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has reasons that reason takes no account of. (W.S. Maugham)

8. In God we trust, all others must pay cash. (Anonymous)

9. Humanity is the sin of God. (A. France)

10. I do not drag it (my talent) in the dust, says I, because they (poor people) haven’t got the dust. (O Henry)

11. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat – seamy on both sides. (O Henry)

12. A committee is a group of people that keeps minutes and loses hours.

(O Henry)

13. – What would you do if you were in my shoes?

Polish them! (English Humour)

14. Architect: Have you any suggestions for the study?

Quickrich: Only that it must be brown. Great thinkers, I understand, are generally found in a brown study. (English Humour)

15. – Last week a grain of sand got into my wife’s eye and she had to go to the doctor. It cost me $5.

That’s nothing. Last week a fur coat got into my wife’s eye and it cost me $500. (English Humour)

16. Teacher: Johny, would you like to go to Heaven?

Johny: Yes, but mother told me to come right home after school.

(English Humour)

17. I think it will be a clash between the political will and the administrative won’t. (J. Lynn and A. Jay)

18. “What happened?” cried Rosemary. “Do all the Americans in Paris just shoot at each other all the time?”

“This seems to be the open season,” he answered. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. “Where have the Snows gone?” he said. “Melted?” jolly good joke, he thought. Magnifique. “Snows all melted?” (H.E. Bates)

20. Drawn up sharply by the second mention of the word milord that day, Angela Snow had no time to make any sort of comment before Mademoiselle Dupont fluffed again and said:

“I am right in thinking that? Yes? He is a milord?”

“Down to the ankles,” Angela Snow said. “And like every Englishman he’s sure his home is his castle.”

At the mention of the word castle Mademoiselle Dupont was unable to speak. A castle – a chateau. There was something overpowering, tres formidable, about the word castle.

“You must ask him to tell you about it,” Angela Snow said. (H.E. Bates)

Exercise XX. Analyze the following cases of zeugma, state the function and types of zeugmatic combinations:

1. Most women in London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners, and French novels. (O. Wilde)

2. I’m trusting in the Lord and a good lawyer. (O. North)

3. For over an hour the minister sighed and chuckled as he studied many of the pieces with admiration and finally returned to the old man to praise his skill. The craftsman bowed one again, and his shy smile revealed no teeth but only genuine pleasure at Sir Alexander’s compliments. (J. Archer)

4. Village looked surreally idyllic, trimmed with daffodils, conservatories, ducks etc. and people clipping hedges for all the world as if life were easy and peaceful, disaster had not happened, and there was such a thing as God. (H. Fielding)

5. Feel he thinks I am trying to trap him into a mini-break; as if it were not a mini-break but marriage, three kids and cleaning out the toilet in the house full of stripped pine in Stoke Newington. (H. Fielding)

6. Krendler had the tool and the time and the venom he needed to smash Starling’s career, and as he set about it, he was vastly aided by chance and the Italian mail. (Th. Harris)

7. His friends were Mary and Harold Winters, and they lived in a big house in the country. It was, I suppose, the sort of life that every single woman who’s spent too many nights alone in a tiny apartment in New York City dreams of: your own house with space, dogs, children, a Mercedes, and a jolly, adorable teddy-bear husband. (C. Bushnell)

8. Everyone held their breath as Sir Ralph looked down at his notes for really beyond all sense, beyond all reason, beyond all decorum and good English manners, too long. (H. Fielding)

9. (In the restaurant) Questions and corks popped, laughter and silver rang… (O Henry)

10. Familiarity breeds contempt and children (M. Twain)

11. There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. Usually once he gets going he will see things through to their logical conclusion come earthquake, tidal wave or naked pictures of Virginia Bottomley on the television. (H. Fielding)

13. He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he was going to talk of Manderley at last, but something held him back, some phobia that struggled top the surface of his mind and won supremacy, for he blew out his match and his flash of confidence at the same time. (D. du Maurier)

14. There were three things that Chico was always on – a phone, a horse or a broad. (G. Marx)

15. He took a filial look at Septimus Kinsolving’s elaborate tombstone in Greenwood, and a tedious excursion through typewritten documents with the family lawyer. (O Henry)

16. “Age fifty-five; married twice; Presbyterian, likes blondes, Tolstoy, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third bottle of wine.” (O Henry)

17. There was a breathless indescribable hour crammed full of half-sentences, hot water, bacon and eggs and confusion; and after that she was alone with Harry in the library, asking him if she dared smoke.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. Out of that period he had brought all of its old pride and scruples of honor, and antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe. (O Henry)

19. And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all. (O Henry)

20. I never could understand why some men who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a bolt of calico draped around what belongs in it. (O Henry)

21. She was alone in the world, with two small children, little money, and, worst of all, a host of friends. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise XXI. Differentiate between cases of tautology pretended and tautology disguised, state its function in the text:

1. Football’s football; if that weren’t the case, it wouldn’t be the game it is. (G. Crooks)

2. Slice him where you like, a hellhound is a hellhound. (P.G. Wodehouse)

3. Immature poets imitate; mature steal. (T.S. Eliot)

4. I rode over to see her once every week for a while; and then I figured it out that if I doubled the number of trips I would see her twice as often.

(O Henry)

5. Ma was certain sure they all slept in their make-up. (H.E. Bates)

6. War is war. The only human being is a dead one. (G. Orwell)

7. It would be like Kitty, soft and pliable, without impervious. You couldn’t move Kitty; you couldn’t reach Kitty. There was nothing there to reach. He understood that perfectly – he had understood it all along.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. Her face, the face of a saint, a Viking Madonna, shone through the faint motes that snowed across the candlelight, drew down its flush from the wine-coloured lanterns in the pine. She was still as still.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

9. Finally one of them had gone and left the other crying, only to feel blue, to feel sad. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

10. “My father had the kind of manners he inherited from the days when you shot first and apologized afterward. Men armed – why, you Europeans haven’t carried arms in civil life since the beginning of the eighteenth century – ”

“Not actually, perhaps – ”

“Not actually. Not really.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

11. This was plain as plain to Dick. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

12. The man was almost shrieking. ‘Drink – black drink. Do you know what colour black is? It’s black. My own uncle was hung by the neck because of it, you hear! My son comes to a sanatorium, and a doctor reeks of it!’ (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

13. But there were insects and insects. (G. Orwell)

14. “No,” I reply firmly. “He fancies her. If he didn’t fancy her he wouldn’t be walking along the street with her. Believe me, having once been a teenage boy I know I wouldn’t have been seen dead talking to a girl I didn’t fancy in case my mates saw me.” I look over to Trevor and Lee for support. “Am I right or am I right?” (M. Gayle)

Exercise XXII. In the following examples pay attention to the structure and semantic peculiarities of oxymoron:

1. A succulent hash arrived, and Mr Wolfsheim, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. They drove the rest of the journey in stormy silence. (W.S. Maugham)

3. Cannot believe he still hasn’t rung. Hate passive-aggressive behaviour of telephone in modern dating world, using non-communication as means of communication. Is terrible, terrible with simple ring or non-ring meaning difference between love and friendliness and happiness and being cast out into ruthless dating trench war again. (H. Fielding)

4. Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. (J. Baldwin)

5. A woman is an absolutely unreliable partner in any straight swindle.

(O Henry)

6. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! (O. Wilde)

7. “No, the Northern races are the tragic races – they don’ indulge in the cheering luxury of tears.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

8. “I’m sorry, dear,” said Harry, malignantly apologetic, “but you know what I think of them. They’re sort of – sort of degenerates – not at all like the old Southerners.” (F Sc. Fitzgerald)

9. “No, but you think it too, don’t you darling? It’s not just me? We are happy, aren’t we? Terribly happy?” (D. du Maurier)

10. “Now you are here, let me show you everything,” she said, her voice ingratiating and sweet as honey, horrible, false. (D. du Maurier)

11. I remembered the touch of her hand on my arm, and that dreadful soft, intimate pitch of her voice close to my ear. (D. du Maurier)

12. We were all three in the rather hearty, cheerful humour of people before a funeral. (D. du Maurier)

13. His moth fell open sharply, but except for a muted gurgle he had nothing to say. (H.E. Bates)

14. His hair had turned gradually white as he talked, and now he lifted his head high to the heavens like a prophet of old – magnificently mad.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. He bent his great brown eyes on her, shrewd – aloof, confused.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. “I’m a cynical idealist.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. He compared the two. Kitty – nervous without being sensitive, temperamental without temperament, a woman who seemed to flit and never light – and Roxanne, who was as young as a spring night, and summed up in her own adolescent laughter. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. During dinner the twilight faltered into dusk, and later it was a starry dark outside. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. “You’re not like me. I’m a romantic little materialist.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. “I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the haughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw.” (O Henry)

Exercise XXIII. Comment on the structural and semantic varieties of antithesis:

1. Men know life too early; women know life too late – that is the difference between men and women. (O. Wilde)

2. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young.

(O. Wilde)

3. It is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself.

(O. Wilde)

4. The soul is born old, but grows young. That is the comedy of life. The body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy. (O. Wilde)

5. Conversation should touch on everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing. (Oscar Wilde)

6. I like men who have a future and women who have a past. (O. Wilde)

7. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. (O. Wilde)

8. We make gods of men and they leave us. Others make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful. (O. Wilde)

9. Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. Women have a more subtle instinct about things. What they like is to be a man’s last romance. (O. Wilde)

10. What is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is unreadable and literature is unread. (O. Wilde)

11. The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. (O. Wilde)

12. What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question of for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot – that is all one can say. (O. Wilde)

13. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. The world is like a game. In this game there are joy and sorrow, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil. The game cannot continue if sin and suffering are altogether eliminated from the creation. (W.S. Maugham)

15. It is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought. (O. Wilde)

16. Virtue is generally merely a form of deficiency, just as vice is an assertion of intellect. (O. Wilde)

17. Money to you means freedom; to me it seems bondage. (W.S. Maugham)

18. I had never looked more youthful, I had never felt so old. (D. du Maurier)

19. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. (O Henry)

20. I knew then that he had mistaken my silence for fatigue, and it had not occurred to him I dreaded this arrival at Manderley as much as I had longed for it in theory. (D. du Maurier)