Macatea: Bestiary of Figures of Speech

Most things have names, so we should not be too surprised that things as mundane as figures of speech have been named. Most of those names belong to an earlier age, an age when rhetoric occupied a central position in education. Today, the names are rarely encountered. But for those of us whose lives are intertwined with the written word, the names may, perhaps, draw our attention to our craft; they may offer a measure of continuity with earlier writers and, at least, they can be a source of innocent amusement.

The following table is extracted from Technical Style [1]. The example for the scesis onomaton is taken from Douglas Hofstadter [2]. For more about such figures of speech, see the little book by Arthur Quinn [3].

References

[ 2 ] D. R. Hofstadter, Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Vintage Books, New York, 1980.

[ 3 ] Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech, Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., Salt Lake City, 1982.

Name	Definition	Example
Anadiplosis	using a previous ending as a beginning	Strive for clarity, for clarity resolves many issues of style.
Anaphora	repeated beginnings	Perhaps you have heard this before. Perhaps you remember.
Antithesis	repeated in the negative	This proof is wrong. It is certainly not valid.
Asterismos	using unneeded words to draw attention to what follows	Confusion often arises from this, an inability to resolve contradictions.
Asyndeton	omitting a conjunction	The presentation was brief, spirited, superficial.
Epistrophe	repeated endings	To write well, read well.
Pleonasm	using superfluous words	Try, try again.
Polyptoton	repeating a word or root, but in a different grammatical form	Common sense is uncommon. (Voltaire)
Polysyndeton	using unneeded conjunctions	The text was long and hard and dull.
Scesis onomaton	omitting all verbs	This sentence no verb.
Zeugma	omitting one or more verbs so that a remaining verb applies to more than one clause	He skips rope daily and lunch occasionally.

Name

Definition

Example

Anadiplosis

using a previous ending as a beginning

Strive for clarity, for clarity resolves many issues of style.

Anaphora

repeated beginnings

Perhaps you have heard this before. Perhaps you remember.

Antithesis

repeated in the negative

This proof is wrong. It is certainly not valid.

Asterismos

using unneeded words to draw attention to what follows

Confusion often arises from this, an inability to resolve contradictions.

Asyndeton

omitting a conjunction

The presentation was brief, spirited, superficial.

Epistrophe

repeated endings

To write well, read well.

Pleonasm

using superfluous words

Try, try again.

Polyptoton

repeating a word or root, but in a different grammatical form

Common sense is uncommon. (Voltaire)

Polysyndeton

using unneeded conjunctions

The text was long and hard and dull.

Scesis onomaton

omitting all verbs

This sentence no verb.

Zeugma

omitting one or more verbs so that a remaining verb applies to more than one clause

He skips rope daily and lunch occasionally.

A Bestiary of Figures of Speech

by J. M. Haile

References