Glossary of Rhetorical Terms-accumulationtobdelygmia
AccumulationFigure wherein a rhetor gathers scattered points and lists them together.
-"We have our troubles too--One trouble is you: you talk too loud, cuss too loud, look too black."
(Langston Hughes, "High to Low")
allegoryExtending a metaphor through an entire speech or passage so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text. The most famous allegory in English is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), an allegory of Christian salvation represented by the varied experiences of its Everyman hero, Christian.
alliteration Repetition of initial consonant sound.-"In a somer seson, whan soft was the sonne,/I shope me into shroudes, as I a shepe were;"(William Langland, 14th century)
-"My style is public negotiations for parity, rather than private negotiations for position." (Jesse Jackson)
ambiguityThe presence of two or more possible meanings in any passage"I can't recommend this book too highly."
amplification General term for all the ways an argument, an explanation, or a description can be expanded and enriched. "Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their place was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly-married as was lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby, and if they had set up a great-grandfather, he would have come home in matting from Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French-polished to the crown of his head." (Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend)
anadiplosis Repetition of the last word of one line or clause to begin the next.
(Pronounced "a na di PLO sis") -"When I give I give myself." (Walt Whitman)
-"Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task." (Henry James)
analogy Reasoning or arguing from parallel cases. A simile is an expressed analogy; a metaphor is an implied one.
anaphoraRepetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses-"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island . . . we shall never surrender." Churchill
anticipation General name for figures wherein a rhetor foresees and replies to objections. Similar to refutation.-"On the morning of his execution, King Charles the First put on two shirts. 'If I tremble with the cold," he said, 'my enemies will say it was from fear. I will not expose myself to such reproaches.'"(qtd. in Sleuth)
anticlimaxA declension from a noble tone to a less exalted one--often for comic effect.
-"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." (Woody Allen)
antirrhesis Rejecting an argument because of its insignificance, error, or wickedness. [Gk. "refutation, counterstatement"]-"I have been mocked and censured as a scare-monger and even as a war-monger, by those whose complacency and inertia have brought us all nearer to war and war nearer to us all." (Winston Churchill)
antithesis Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.[Gk. "opposition"]
-"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing." (Goethe)
-"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)
-"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him."(E. M. Forster, Howard's End)
antonomasia Substitution of a title, epithet, or descriptive phrase for a proper name (or of a personal name for a common name) to designate a member of a group or class.(Pronunciation: "an toe no MAS ya")Calling a lover "Casanova," a man in love "Romeo," an office worker "Dilbert," Elvis Presley "the King," Bill Clinton "the Comeback Kid,"
apophasis The mention of something in disclaiming intention of mentioning it--or pretending to deny what is really affirmed-"Mary Matlin, the Bush campaign's political director, made the point with ruthless venom at a press briefing in Washington, saying, 'The larger issue is that Clinton is evasive and slick. We have never said to the press that he is a philandering, pot-smoking, draft-dodger. There's nothing nefarious or subliminal going on.'"(reported in Manchester Guardian, 1992)
aporia The expression of real or simulated doubt or perplexity. In classical rhetoric, aporia means placing a claim in doubt by developing arguments on both sides of an issue. In the terminology of deconstruction, aporia is a final impasse or paradox--the site at which the text most obviously undermines its own rhetorical structure, dismantles, or deconstructs itself. [Gk. "without passage"]
-"A virginal air, large blue eyes very soulful and appealing, a dazzling fair skin, a supple and resilient body, a touching voice, teeth of ivory and the loveliest blond hair--there you have a sketch of this charming creature whose naive graces and delicate traits are beyond our power to describe." (Marquis De Sade)
aposiopesis An unfinished thought or broken sentence.-"I will have such revenges on you both/That all the world shall--I will do things--/What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be/The terrors of the earth!”(Shakespeare, King Lear)
apostrophe Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, or a nonexistent character. [Gk. "turning away"] -"Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee . . .." (William Wordsworth, "London, 1802")
-"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art" (John Keats)
apposition Placing side-by-side two coordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification of the first. - "The sky was sunless and grey, there was snow in the air, buoyant motes, play things that seethed and floated like the toy flakes inside a crystal." (Truman Capote, The Muses Are Heard)
artistic proofs [Gk. entechnoi pisteis]Proofs or means of persuasion taught specifically by the art of rhetoric. In Aristotle's rhetorical theory, these include ethos, pathos, andlogos.
Asiatic A prolix or highly ornamented style. Contrast with Attic.
-"Altho’ Dixon is heading off to Sumatra with a member of the Church of England,— that is, the Ancestor of Troubles,— a stranger with whom he morever but hours before was carousing exactly like Sailors, shameful to say, yet, erring upon the side of Conviviality, will he decide to follow Fox’s Advice, and answer 'that of God' in Mason, finding it soon enough with the Battle on all ‘round them, when both face their equal chances of imminent Death.
assonance Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
[L. "to sound towards"]
-"Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light." (Dylan Thomas)
-"Strips of tinfoil winking like people" (Sylvia Plath)
asyndeton Omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses (opposite of polysyndeton).
(Pronounced "a SIN da ton") [Gk. "unconnected"]-"Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better--splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general infection of ill temper . . .." (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)
Attic Brief, witty, sometimes epigrammatic style--opposite of the ornate Asiaticstyle.
[Gk. "the style of Attica"]-"Some books are to be tasted. Others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. That is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." (Francis Bacon, "Of Studies")
auxesis A gradual increase in intensity of meaning: words arranged in ascending order of importance. See also climax.[Gk. "amplification"]
-"Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power." (Shakespeare, Sonnet 65)
bdelygmia A litany of abuse--a series of critical epithets, descriptions, or attributes.
(Pronounced "de LIG me uh") [Gk. "abuse"]
-"Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.
You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseous super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked horse.
Mr. Grinch.
You're a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce."
(Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas)
-"The Republicans are not stupid. They tagged the liberals as 'latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, school-busing, fetus-killing, tree-hugging, gun-fearing, morally relativist and secularly humanist so-called liberal elitists,' as commentator Jason Epstein described it, soft on communism, soft on crime, opposed to capital punishment, and soft on the new war on terrorism."
(Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News, 6 June 2005)