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what do you mean by ''transferred epithet''?give examples.

Transferred epithet, is the trope or rhetorical device in which a modifier, usually an adjective, is applied to the "wrong" word in the sentence. The word whose modifier is thus displaced can either be actually present in the sentence, or it can be implied logically. The effect often stresses the emotions or feelings of the individual by expanding them on to the environment.

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Transferred epithet, is the trope or rhetorical device in which a modifier, usually an adjective, is applied to the "wrong" word in the sentence. The word whose modifier is thus displaced can either be actually present in the sentence, or it can be implied logically. The effect often stresses the emotions or feelings of the individual by expanding them on to the environment. 

For example, we use a transferred epithet when we say 'John spent a happy day'. Here we do not mean that the day was happy; it was John who was happy.

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An epithet is an adjective (or phrase containing an adjective) or adverb which modifies (describes) a noun. For instance, in "dreamless sleep", dreamless is the epithet.

In a transferred epithet (also known as hypallage; literally "echange") the adjective or adverb is transferred from the noun it logically belongs with, to another one which fits it grammatically but not logically. So in "dreamless night" , dreamless is a transferred epithet. The exact meaning of the sentence is "night when I (or whoever) slept without dreaming," since a night can't actually dream anyway.

We use transferred epithets all the time. Another example could be "I had a terrible day." "Terrible" is a transferred epithet, because it wasn't the day that was terrible, only the things that happened to me on that day. A more poetic example would be "a long and weary road" - long can apply logically to the road, but not weary – so weary is a transferred epithet.

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