• The formation of a word, as cuckoo or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent

• A word so formed

• Rhetoric the use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical effect.

• . a person who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent; adversary.

• 2. the adversary of the hero or protagonist of a drama or other literary work: Iago is the antagonist of Othello.

• 3. Physiology. a muscle that acts in opposition to another.Compare agonist def. 3.

• 4. Dentistry. a tooth in one jaw that articulates during mastication or occlusion with a tooth in the opposing jaw.

• 5. Pharmacology. a drug that counteracts the effects of another drug.

• 1. the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work.

• 2. a proponent for or advocate of a political cause, social program, etc.

• 3. the leader or principal person in a movement, cause, etc.

• 4. the first actor in ancient Greek drama, who played not only the main role, but also other roles when the main character was offstage.Compare deuteragonist, tritagonist.

• 5. Physiology. agonist.

• verb (used with object) to show or indicate beforehand; prefigure: Political upheavals foreshadowed war.

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• 1. a device in the narrative of a motion picture, novel, etc., by which an event or scene taking place before the present time in the narrative is inserted into the chronological structure of the work.

• 2. an event or scene so inserted. • 3. Also called flashback hallucinosis. Psychiatry. a. the spontaneous

recurrence of visual hallucinations or other effects of a drug, as LSD, long after the use of the drug has been discontinued.

• b. recurrent and abnormally vivid recollection of a traumatic experience, as a battle, sometimes accompanied by hallucinations.

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• . the commencement of two or more stressed syllables of a word group either with the same consonant sound or sound group (consonantal alliteration), as in from stem to stern, or with a vowel sound that may differ from syllable to syllable (vocalic alliteration), as in each to all.Compare consonance def. 4a.

• 2. the commencement of two or more words of a word group with the same letter, as in apt alliteration's artful aid.

• 1. the formation of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things, or of such images collectively: the dim imagery of a dream.

• 2. pictorial images. • 3. the use of rhetorical images. • 4. figurative description or illustration; rhetorical

images collectively. • 5. Psychology. mental images collectively, esp.

those produced by the action of imagination.

• 1. identity in sound of some part, esp. the end, of words or lines of verse.

• 2. a word agreeing with another in terminal sound: Find is a rhyme for mind and womankind.

• 3. verse or poetry having correspondence in the terminal sounds of the lines.

• 4. a poem or piece of verse having such correspondence.

• 5. verse def. 4.

• 1. the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, esp. as a rhetorical figure.

• 2. the representation of a thing or abstraction in the form of a person, as in art.

• 3. the person or thing embodying a quality or the like; an embodiment or incarnation: He is the personification of tact.

• 4. an imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction.

• 5. the act of personifying. • 6. a character portrayal or representation in a dramatic

or literary work.

• 1. a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

• 2. a self-contradictory and false proposition.

• 3. any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature.

• 4. an opinion or statement contrary to commonly accepted opinion.

• 1. a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”Compare mixed metaphor, simile def. 1.

• 2. something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

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• 1. a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”Compare metaphor.

• 2. an instance of such a figure of speech or a use of words exemplifying it.

• 1. a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based: the analogy between the heart and a pump.

• 2. similarity or comparability: I see no analogy between your problem and mine.

• 3. Biology. an analogous relationship. • 4. Linguistics. a. the process by which words or phrases are created

or re-formed according to existing patterns in the language, as when shoon was re-formed as shoes, when -ize is added to nouns like winter to form verbs, or when a child says foots for feet.

• b. a form resulting from such a process. • 5. Logic. a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be

similar to another thing in a certain respect, on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.

• 1. obvious and intentional exaggeration.

• 2. an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”