LITERARY

STYLISTICS

ALLITERATION

WHAT IS ALLITERATION?

DEFINITION

In a basic definition of alliteration, we would

say that the initial consonant sounds of

words are repeated. Some examples: sweet,

sweep, swallow. But the technical definition

is a relationship between words when the

following is present:

• Consonants just before the first accented

vowels are the same.

• The vowels are not pronounced alike.

• The following consonants are different.

Here are a few examples:

sweet – swallow, lime – like, fellow – fat

J. A. Cuddon’s Definition

• It is a figure of speech in which consonant,

especially at the beginning of words, or

stressed syllables, are repeated. It is a very old

device related to verse but it is used in prose.

In old English poetry Alliteration was a

continual and an essential part of the metrical

scheme.

Examples

• "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea."

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner")

• "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

• Alliteration is common in nonsense verse:

Be lenient with lobsters, and ever kind to

crabs,

And be not disrespectful to cuttle-fish or

dabs;

Chase not the Cochin-China, chaff not the ox

obese,

And babble not of feather-beds in company

with geese.

It is found also in tongue-twisters:

1. Angela Abigail Applewhite ate anchovies

and artichokes.

2. Bertha Bartholomew blew big, blue

bubbles.

• It is in jingles:

Dingle dingle doosey,

The cat’s in the well,

The dog’s away to Bellingen

To buy the bairn a bell.

• And in Pater, beloved of drill sergeants and the like:

Now then, you horrible shower of heathen, have I

your complete hattention? Hotherwise I shall

heave the whole hairy lot of you into the salt

box where you will live on hopeful

hallucination far as long as hit pleases God and

the commanding hofficer.

• Alliteration gave the language a musical

quality. It played the same role as rhyme in

Old English poetry.

• Alliteration is wildly used in Modern English.

• Songs, nursery rhymes, newspaper headlines

and adds often contain ALLITERATION

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