Question

Can someone give me an example of a transferred epithet?

Answer 1

Hint: An epithet is a literary device that describes a person, place, or thing by using a descriptive word or phrase to accompany or replace it. It's an adjective or phrase that expresses a quality or attribute that's thought to be unique to the person or thing in question.

Complete answer:
A transferred epithet is a little-known but often used figure of speech in which a modifier (typically an adjective) qualifies a noun that isn't the person or object it's describing. In other words, the modifier or epithet is moved from the noun it describes to another noun in the phrase.

"I had a beautiful day," for example, is an example of a transferred epithet. The day isn't perfect in and of itself. The speaker had an excellent day. The adjective "beautiful" accurately reflects the type of day the speaker had. "Cruel bars," "sleepless night," and "suicidal sky" are some additional instances of transferred epithets.

Because the bars, which are supposedly put in a jail, are inanimate objects, they cannot be cruel. The person who put up the bars is a monster. The bars are only there to encourage the person's evil intentions. Can a night be sleepless? No, The individual enduring a night in which he or she is unable to sleep is the one who is sleepless. A sky cannot be suicidal, yet a gloomy, foreboding sky may exacerbate a suicidal person's melancholy mood.

"Sara has an unpleasant marriage," as another example. Marriage is fleeting; it is an intellectual construct that cannot be joyful or sad because it lacks emotional capacity. Sara's (and presumably her partner's) marriage, on the other hand, may be unhappy. The modifier "unhappy" is transferred to the word "marriage" in this statement, making it a transferred epithet.

Note: Writers frequently utilise transferred epithets to fill their works with vivid imagery since they provide a vehicle for metaphoric language. Personification, a figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is given human traits or powers, is not to be confused with transferred epithets.