Rhetorical Terms
Terms
undefined, object
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- Polysyndeton
- an overabundance of conjunctions
- Hysteron proteron
- reversal of the natural or logical order of ideas
- Exphrasis
- extended and elaborate description of a work of art, a building, or a natural setting
- Synecdoche
- the use of a part for the whole, or the reverse
- Metonymy
- the substitution of one word for another which it suggests
- Polyptoton
- the repetition of a noun or pronoun in different cases at the beginning of successive phrases or clauses
- Tricolon crencens
- the accumulation of three parallel phrases or clauses, each of which is at least one syllable longer than that preceding it
- Synizesis
- a metrical effect whereby two contiguous vowels within the same word and normally pronounced serparately are slurred into one syllable
- Synchysis
- interlocking word order
- Alliteration
- the repetition of the same letter or sound, usually at the beginning of a series of words
- Anaphora
- the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive clauses
- Asyndeton
- omission of conjunctions
- Anastrophe
- the inversion of the normal order of words
- Hiatus
- the avoidance in meter elision between one word ending in a vowel and another beginning with a vowel
- Tmesis
- separation into two parts of a word normally written as one
- Transferred Epithet
- an epithet which has been transferred from the word to which it strictly belongs to another word connected with it in thought
- Apostrophe
- a sudden break from the previous narrative for an address, in the second person, of some person or object, absent of present
- Litotes
- understatement, often enhanced by the use of the negative
- Zeugma
- the joining of two words by a modifying or governing word which strictly applies to only one of them
- Hendiadys
- the expression of an idea by means of two nouns connected by a conjunction instead of by a noun and a modifying adjective, or by one noun modified by another
- Euphemism
- the avoidance of a direct, blunt manner of speaking in favor of a more subtle and sometimes diluted form of expression
- Hyperbaton
- the distanced placement of two words which are logically meant to be understood together
- Prolepsis
- the inclusion in the main story of references to events which in fact will occur after the dramatic time of the poem, and to the people and circumstances involved in these later events