The word "epithet" is translated from Greek as the application, addition. The epithet is a definition which gives to expression figurativeness and also emotionality, author's coloring and additional sense.
The epithet is, first of all, an art definition which notes essential line in the phenomenon represented by the author.
Epithet – stylistically the significant, characterizing subject of the speech, a word or a phrase.
Adjectives (a sail lonely), nouns (mother – cheese the earth), adverbs (shchegolevato to cross legs), adverbial participles (waves rush, rattling and sparkling) and even verbs can be epithets (heaven becomes blue). Epithets are graphic and lyrical. Graphic epithets allocate the essential party of any estimated element (blue sea) represented without introduction. And lyrical epithets express the author's relation to what it represents (black square). From folklore so-called constant epithets came to the speech. These are the steady figurative and poetic definitions of the phenomena or objects expressed, as a rule, by adjectives (dark, green meadows, yellow sands). Epithets in folklore define a subject in terms of the embodiment in it the perfect or superior quality. The ideological and art value of epithets in folklore corresponds to the meaning of works. The perfection of the represented world (semiprecious stones, a high tower) is transferred in fairy tales by means of epithets, in songs it has allegoric character and serves expressive lyrical assessment (mlad, the falcon is clear). Allocating habitual words with unusual properties, epithets help authors to create the bright and expressive world. They give dimensions to words, give an emotional assessment or figurative characteristic to the subjects of the image. The familiar words which are skillfully connected with each other help the writer to disclose characters of characters, to ship the reader in life and the atmosphere of the described era.