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What is a play on words that have similar sound, but different meaning?

1) Simile
2) Metaphor
3) Pun
4) Irony

1 Answer

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Final answer:

A play on words with a similar sound but different meaning is called a 3) pun. A pun is often used for humor or emphasis by exploiting the double meanings or similar sounding words.

Step-by-step explanation:

The term for a play on words that have similar sounds but different meanings is a 3) pun.

A pun often relies upon a word having two meanings or sounding like another word, and it is frequently used to create a comedic or rhetorical effect.

For instance, saying "I used to be a baker, but I couldn't make enough dough" is a pun because it uses the word "dough" to refer both to bread mixture and to money.

Other figures of speech such as simile and metaphor involve comparisons.

A simile uses the words "like" or "as" to compare different things, for example, "Her smile was like sunshine."

A metaphor directly compares two things without using "like" or "as", for example, "All the world's a stage," implying that life is similar to a theatrical play.

Both are common examples of figurative language.

Irony, another option from the question list, is a rhetorical device where words are used to convey a meaning that is opposite of what is actually said, or there is a situation that ends up quite differently than what was expected.

The phrase "clear as mud" is an example of irony because mud is not clear, so the phrase indicates that something is not clear at all.

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