Literary Devices
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50 free Literary Devices trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Literary devices are the tools writers reach for when plain statement is not enough: a comparison that makes a feeling visible, a sound that sticks in the ear, a plot trick that keeps the pages turning. Most of them have odd names, and many of those names carry a tale of their own, borrowed from Greek theatre, a Victorian serial or a muddled character in an old comedy. This quiz asks you to identify each device from an example rather than recite a definition. You will meet lines from Shakespeare, Dickens and Burns, speeches, tongue twisters and everyday phrases, and be asked what the writer is doing. It covers the figures of speech taught in English class, the sound effects of poetry, and the plot and staging techniques behind novels, plays and films. It suits students revising for a test, teachers who want a ready multiple-choice set for class, and readers who enjoy knowing the right name for a writer's trick. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which figure of speech, from Greek words for 'sharp' and 'dull', covers phrases like 'jumbo shrimp' and 'bittersweet'?
Oxymoron
Oxymoron is itself an example of one: its Greek halves pair 'sharp' with 'dull' or 'foolish'. Romeo reels off about a dozen in a single speech in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Q 02The tongue twister about Peter Piper picking a peck of pickled peppers is a familiar example of which sound device?
Alliteration
Alliteration got its name in the 15th century from the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano, who built it on the Latin littera, 'letter of the alphabet'. The Peter Piper rhyme was published by 1813.
Q 03Robert Burns sings that his love is 'like a red, red rose' in a Scots song, using which figure of speech?
Simile
Simile comes from the Latin word similis, meaning 'like'. Burns based the 1794 song on traditional sources, and it is often published as a poem.
Q 04Jaques declares in Shakespeare's As You Like It that all the world is a stage, a famous example of which device?
Metaphor
Metaphor is itself a metaphor: the word comes from a Greek term for 'transference', as if a meaning were being carried over from one thing to another.
Q 05Tall tales about the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan rely on which figure of speech, from Greek for 'throw beyond'?
Hyperbole
Hyperbole has a modern champion in the word 'literally': dictionaries now record its use as an intensifier in statements that are not literally true.
Q 06Emily Dickinson uses which device when she casts Death as a gentleman caller who takes her for a carriage ride?
Personification
Personification of Death as a polite caller is the poem's best-known feature, yet Dickinson never saw it published: it appeared posthumously in 1890 under the title 'The Chariot'.
Q 07Dying in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio jokes that tomorrow he will be 'a grave man', an example of what?
A pun
A pun was Shakespeare's great weakness, in Samuel Johnson's view: he called a quibble 'the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world'. Not even a death scene was safe.
Q 08Lewis Carroll borrowed the name of a two-part travelling case for which kind of blended word, like 'smog' or 'brunch'?
Portmanteau
Portmanteau words got their name in Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll's own coinage 'slithy', from the poem 'Jabberwocky', packs 'slimy' and 'lithe' into one word.
Q 09Calling a toilet a 'restroom' or 'powder room' is an example of which device, from Greek for 'words of good omen'?
Euphemism
Euphemism wears out fast: 'lavatory' and 'toilet' were once polite substitutes themselves, a cycle that Steven Pinker named the euphemism treadmill.
Q 10Charles Dickens kept readers of his serial novels desperate for the next instalment by ending episodes on which device?
Cliffhanger
Cliffhanger endings became a staple of Victorian serials after Dickens, but the word arrived only in the 1930s, coined for film serials whose episodes each ended in peril.
Q 11Words such as 'oink', 'meow' and 'beep' belong to which device, named from Greek for 'name-making'?
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia fades with time: 'fanfare', 'pigeon' and 'cough' probably began as imitations of sounds, though modern speakers no longer hear the echo.
Q 12'Spill the beans', 'break a leg' and 'raining cats and dogs' are well-known English examples of which kind of phrase?
Idiom
Idiom rarely survives translation: the Polish way to say 'kick the bucket' is 'kick the calendar', while the French 'break their pipe'.
Q 13Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal suggests the Irish poor sell their children as food, a savage example of what?
Satire
Satire this deadpan needed a straight face: Swift's narrator calmly notes that a well-nursed child of a year old could be stewed, roasted, baked or boiled.
Q 21Oscar Wilde's much-quoted line 'I can resist anything except temptation' is an example of which figure of speech?
Paradox
Paradox of this verbal kind was a trademark of Wilde and of G. K. Chesterton, who observed that 'spies do not look like spies'. Shakespeare's Polonius finds method in Hamlet's madness.
Q 22The proverb 'Man proposes, God disposes' and Dickens's 'best of times, worst of times' opening both use which device?
Antithesis
Antithesis is Greek for 'setting opposite'. Dickens keeps it up for a whole paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities, moving on to wisdom and foolishness, Light and Darkness, hope and despair.
Q 23Martin Luther King Jr. repeated the phrase 'I have a dream' eight times in his best-known speech, using which device?
Anaphora
Q 14Plato's tale of prisoners chained in a cave, taking shadows for reality, is among the best-known examples of what?
Allegory
Allegory literally means 'speaking about something else' in Greek. Plato's is about a philosopher who finds greater knowledge outside the cave and tries to share it.
Q 15Hamlet's 'To be, or not to be' speech, spoken as if alone on stage, is a notable example of which theatrical device?
Soliloquy
Soliloquy joins the Latin solus, 'alone', and loqui, 'to speak'. Saint Augustine used the Latin word around 386 for a book of spiritual meditations.
Q 16Sophocles lets the audience of Oedipus Rex know the king's fate long before Oedipus grasps it, using which device?
Dramatic irony
Dramatic irony drives the plot: Oedipus ignores the prophet Tiresias and presses on with the hunt for King Laius's killer, never suspecting that he is the man he seeks.
Q 17The green light on Daisy's dock in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a much-discussed example of which device?
Symbolism
Symbolism here is usually read as Gatsby's unreachable goal of winning Daisy and, with her, the American Dream. Nick sees him standing alone on his lawn, staring at it across the bay.
Q 18Orson Welles tells most of Citizen Kane after its hero's death, through a reporter's interviews, using which device?
Flashback
Flashback, formally called analepsis, is far older than cinema: the murderer in the Arabian Nights tale 'The Three Apples' explains his crime in a series of them.
Q 19Saying that a beaten stock-market trader 'met his Waterloo', with no further explanation, is an example of which device?
Allusion
Allusion comes from the Latin alludere, 'to play' or 'to jest'. It only works on an audience that already knows the reference, which makes it a quiet test of shared culture.
Q 20The speech by Sojourner Truth known as 'Ain't I a Woman' takes its title from a famous example of which device?
Rhetorical question
Rhetorical question was also Mark Antony's weapon in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: he reminds the crowd that Caesar refused a crown three times, then asks whether that was ambition.
Anaphora is Greek for 'carrying back'. Besides adding emphasis, starting sentence after sentence the same way gives a speech rhythm and makes it easier to remember.
Q 24Miguel de Cervantes mocks old tales of knights errant throughout Don Quixote, making it a famous example of what?
Parody
Parody can outlive its target: Don Quixote is far better known than Amadis de Gaula, the romance of chivalry that inspired it.
Q 25Dogberry says his watch has 'comprehended two auspicious persons' in Much Ado About Nothing, making which verbal slip?
Malapropism
Malapropism is named after Mrs. Malaprop of Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals, who praises one man as 'the very pineapple of politeness'. Dogberry meant 'apprehended two suspicious persons'.
Q 26Which verbal slip is named after an Oxford don said to have announced the hymn 'Kinkering Kongs their Titles Take'?
Spoonerism
Spoonerism honours the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, Warden of New College, though most of the slips credited to him are apocryphal. He meant 'Conquering Kings'.
Q 27'The Great' in Alexander the Great and 'the Lionheart' in Richard the Lionheart are examples of which naming device?
Epithet
Epithet is a hallmark of Homer, whose 'wine-dark sea' James Joyce twisted into 'the snot-green sea'. Rulers needed them too, to tell Charles the Fat from Charles the Bald.
Q 28William Shakespeare repeats images of blood and water throughout the tragedy Macbeth, an example of which device?
Motif
Motif need not be an image: Kurt Vonnegut used repeated elements to connect moments of Slaughterhouse-Five that would otherwise seem separated by time and space.
Q 29Saying 'not bad' to mean 'excellent' is which figure of speech, a hallmark of Old English poetry and Icelandic sagas?
Litotes
Litotes comes from a Greek word meaning 'simplicity', yet its effect is often to exaggerate: listeners fill in for themselves what was left unsaid.
Q 30Which French-sounding term for a phrase with a risqué second meaning has not actually been used in France for centuries?
Double entendre
Double entendre took on its suggestive twist in English after John Dryden used it in 1673. Modern French has no exact equivalent, and the phrase would be ungrammatical there.