Rhetorical Terms?Language devices 1. synecdoche - a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man. 2. colloquial ? adj. characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal. 3. litotes ? noun understatement, especially that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in ?not bad at all.?.