What is Alliteration? Alliteration Meaning

What is Alliteration?

Looking for some alliteration examples to expand your writing repertoire?

It’s packed with examples from pop culture, sports, literature, and content marketing that’ll inspire you to infuse alliteration into your own writing.

You’ll also discover:

How alliteration helped you learn letter sounds and develop memory skills when you were young;

The differences between alliteration, assonance, and consonance;

How freelance writers, bloggers, students, marketers, and literary greats use alliteration to touch the hearts and minds of readers.

Ready? We’ll start with a quick alliteration refresher…

What is Alliteration?

Alliteration is a stylistic literary device that refers to the repetition of closely connected series of words that have the same beginning consonant sounds.

For example, here’s an all-too-true story that repeats the beginning “b” sound:

“Barbara baked banana bread, but it burned.”

(Bummer. )

Alliteration has been used for centuries to breathe life into the written (and spoken) word through the effect of the sounds of words.

For example, in the movie “V for Vendetta”, V’s self-introduction takes alliteration to extreme. The effect of the string of “v” words certainly draws attention to his character through emphasis and tone:

The words of his speech tell his background story, but the repeated “v” sounds help viewers get a sense of his persona. The ominous impression of “V” is unforgettable.

This extreme example of alliteration demonstrates the power of verbal alliteration in film, but this technique has similar effects in written form.

Before we dig into the benefits of alliteration, let’s take a look at alliteration’s close cousins: assonance and consonance.