Rhetorical Terms
Terms
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- Amplification
- General term for all of the ways that an argument, an explanation, or adescription can be expanded and enriched. A natural virtue in an oral culture, amplification provides "redundancy of information, cerimonial amplitude, and scope for a memorable syntax and diction".
- Pun
- A play on words, either on different senses of the same word or on the similar sense or sound of different words.
- Metaphor
- An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common. Expresses the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar.
- Auxesis
- A gradual increase in intensity of meaning with words arranged in ascending order of force or importance.
- Metonymy
- A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with ich it is closely associated
- Simile
- A stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimiar things that have certain qualities in common.
- Antimetabole
- The repetition of words, in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order.
- Copia
- Expansive richness as a stylistic goal.
- Anaphora
- Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.
- Paralipsis
- Emphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it.
- Personification
- A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
- Synecdoche
- A figure of speech in which a part is said to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the generalor the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.
- Alliteration
- Repition of initial consonant sound.
- Effectio
- Personal description; a head-to-toe inventory of a persons physical attributes or charms.
- Enargia
- A visually powerful description that vividly recreats something or someone in words.
- Apostrophe
- 1) Mark of punctuation used to indicate possessive case or omission of a letter from a word. 2) Rhetorical term for breaking off discourse to address some absent prson or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or nonexistent character.
- Assonance
- Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in words.
- Attic Style
- Brief, witty, sometimes epigrammatic style--opposite of the ornate Asiatic Style.
- Parenthesis
- The insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence.
- Euphuism
- Elabortely patterned prose style characterized by extensive use of simile and illustration, balanced constructions, alliteration, and antithesis. This is generally considered a vice, though it can be used to good humerous effect.
- Antithesis
- Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
- Epiphora
- Repitition of a word or phrase at the end of successive cluases or phrases.
- Chiasmus
- The reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses.
- Synathroesmus
- The piling up of adjectives, often in the spirit of invective
- Paradox
- A statement that appears to contradict itself.
- Litotes
- A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
- Commoratio
- Repition of a point several times in different words.
- Accumulation
- Figure of speech in which a speaker or writer gathers scattered poits and lists them together
- Asiatic Style
- A prolix or highly ornamented style
- Epicrisis
- Circumstance in which a speaker quotes a passage and comments on it.
- Distinctio
- An explicit reference to various meanings of a word--usually for the purpose of removing ambiguities.
- Hyperbole
- An extravagent statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
- Onomatopoeia
- The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
- Pleonasm
- Redundancy; use of words to emphasize what is clear without them.
- Epexegesis
- Adding words or phrases to further clarify or specify a statement already made.
- Epimone
- Frequent repetition of the same plea in similar phrases or questions; dwelling on a point.
- Paraphrase
- A restatement of a text or passage in anotherform or other words, often to clarify meaning.
- Understatement
- Figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
- Apposition
- Placing side-by-side two coordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification ofthe first.
- Oxymoron
- A figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side; a compressed paradox.