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Hypallage

Rhetorical Devices
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Hypallage is a transfer of an adjective or quality from the noun it logically belongs to onto a nearby noun. A phrase such as “sleepless night” may suggest a sleepless person rather than a night itself.

Detailed Definition
Hypallage, also called transferred epithet, deliberately displaces a descriptive word from its expected grammatical partner. Instead of saying that a traveler is weary, a poem may describe the road as weary; instead of naming a person's anxious thoughts, it may give anxiety to the room or night. This slight logical disturbance condenses perception and makes the external world seem colored by feeling. Poets use hypallage to intensify atmosphere, merge mind and landscape, and create fresh associations that ordinary literal syntax would keep separate.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The sleepless night watched over the child,” transferring the child’s sleeplessness to the night; “She walked through a nervous forest,” giving the forest the traveler’s anxiety; “The weary road led us home,” assigning the walkers’ fatigue to the road; “He drank from a thoughtful cup of tea,” shifting the drinker’s contemplation to the cup
Additional Notes
In poetry, hypallage can make description feel dreamlike or uncanny by shifting a quality onto an unexpected noun, as in “sleepless night” for a sleepless person. It differs from personification because the transferred adjective need not give the object human agency.
Other Meanings of “Hypallage”
Also Known As
Transferred Epithet Epithet Transfer Displaced Modifier
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