Figure of speech

The earliest known text listing them, though not explicitly as a system, is the Rhetorica ad Herennium, of unknown authorship, where they are called πλεονασμός (pleonasmos—addition), ἔνδεια (endeia—omission), μετάθεσις (metathesis—transposition) and ἐναλλαγή (enallage—permutation).

A few examples follow: Scholars of classical Western rhetoric have divided figures of speech into two main categories: schemes and tropes.

Schemes (from the Greek schēma, 'form or shape') are figures of speech that change the ordinary or expected pattern of words.

Professor Robert DiYanni, in his book Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay[8] wrote: "Rhetoricians have catalogued more than 250 different figures of speech, expressions or ways of using words in a nonliteral sense."

Schemes are words or phrases whose syntax, sequence, or pattern occurs in a manner that varies from an ordinary usage.

In short, the quadripartita ratio offered the student or author a ready-made framework, whether for changing words or the transformation of entire texts.