Figures of wordplay

These are generally used to please the ear of your audience, so in a legal argument may be used in moderation when opening and closing (although try and avoid punning in court!)

Wordplay and Puns

Antanaclasis - this involves the repetition of a word in two different senses.

Example :

If we don't hang together, we'll hang separately —Benjamin Franklin
Note: This is also a trope of repetition.

Paranomasia (punning)

Example :

Don't let your metaphoric retch exceed your metaphoric gasp

Syllepsis -Using a word differently in relation to two or more words that it modifies or governs (sometimes called zeugma).

Example :

There's a certain type of woman that would rather press grapes than clothes — Ad for Peck & Peck suits

Onomatopoeia Use of words whose sound correspond with their semantic value.

Examples:

The buzzing of innumerable bees...

From Alexander Pope comes this famous example of the correspondence between sound and sense:

'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo of the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
but when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.