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- Hendiadys. Using two nouns linked by a conjunction to express a single complex idea.
- Hermeneutics. The theoretical underpinnings of interpreting texts, usually religious or literary.
- Heteroglossia. The many prolific languages of any culture.
- Heuristics. Determining or applying the proper methods for investigation.
- Homiologia. A tedious style or redundancy of style.
- Homoioteleuton. From the Greek ομοιοτέλευτο (homios, "like" and teleute, "ending"). A figure of speech where adjacent or parallel words have similar endings.
- Horismus. A brief and often antithetical definition.
- Hypallage. A literary device that reverses the syntactic relation of two words (as in "her beauty's face").
- Hyperbaton. A figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect.
- Hyperbole. A figure of speech where emphasis is achieved through exaggeration, independently or through comparison. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "'His body was as white as snow, his face burned like fire.'"
- Hypophora. When a speaker asks aloud what his/her adversaries have to say for themselves or against the speaker, and then proceeds to answer the question. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "'When he reminded you of your old friendship, were you moved? No, you killed him nevertheless, and with even greater eagerness. And then when his children grovelled at your feet, were you moved to pity? No, in your extreme cruelty you even prevented their father's burial.'"
- Hypothesis. An educated guess.
- Hypsos. Great or worthy writing, sometimes called sublime. Longinus's theme in On the Sublime.
- Hypozeuxis. A sentence in which every clause has its own subject and verb.
- Hysteron proteron. A rhetorical device in which the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first.
Read more about this topic: Glossary Of Rhetoric Terms