updated 02 January 2005
77 RHETORICAL TERMS WITH EXAMPLES: 2003
continued (F-Z)
(draft page*)

With examples provided by students enrolled in ENGL 5730 in Spring 2003 and submitted--in phase one--by the evening of Jan. 30 and--in phase two--by Feb. 4th.   For the sake of variety--and, in a few cases, accuracy--some examples have been matched with terms other than those originally submitted.  Terms beginning F-Z are on this page.  Terms A-E are back here.

How to use this page: After studying the example(s) accompanying each rhetorical term below, try to compose a clear and accurate definition of the term.  Better yet, write down your definition.  Then click on the term to compare your definition with the one in our online glossary.

*  If you spot any errors in the transcription of quotations that you sent me, please notify me as soon as possible via e-mail.   This weekend (Feb 8-9), I'll be making final corrections to the page.
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TERMS F-Z

Gradatio
--"The church is a temple of praise; of praise and worship, of worship and family, of family and love." [HF]

Homoioiteleuton
--“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
(Shakespeare) [AM]

Hyperbaton
--"Men are willing to credit what they wish, and encourage rather those who gratify them with pleasure
than those that instruct them with infidelity." 
(Samuel Johnson) [AC]

Hyperbole
--"I had so much homework, I needed a pickup truck to carry all my books home!"  [BS]
--“Because the house always wins. You play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you; unless, when that perfect hand comes along you bet big, then you take the house.” – (George Clooney from Ocean’s 11) [JA]

Hypophora
--“Who cares that he fell back to the sea?/ See him acclaiming
the sun and come plunging down/ while his sensible daddy goes straight
into town.” (Anne Sexton “To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph”) [DM]

--“Who says you’re like one of the dog days?
You’re nicer. And better.
Even in May, the weather can be gray,
And a summer sub-let doesn’t last forever.
Sometimes the sun’s too hot;
Sometimes it is not.
Who can stay young forever?
People break their necks or just drop dead!
But you? Never!
If there’s just one condensed reader left
Who can figure out the abridged alphabet,
After you’re dead and gone,
In this poem you’ll live on!”
("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" by Howard Moss )[AM]

--"Are you giving up days to what you think is PMS?
If you are, it could be PMDD."
(Zoloft advertisement) [AJ]

--Why do you love me? I am perfect and pleasing in every way. Why are you jealous of me? I am beautiful, courteous, and kind. Why do you hate me? I am everything that you are not and never will be. [HF]

--"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons."
(“Anthem For Doomed Youth,” Wilfred Owen) [SD]

Hysteron Proteron
--"The moon is behind, and at the full" (Samuel Coleridge's "Christabel") [LM]
--“‘No more she lives to give us bread/ Who asked her
only stones.”’ (Dorothy Parker “For a Sad Lady”) [DM]
--"Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!"
(Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Indian Serenade) [SB]
--"My dame that bred me up and bare me in her wombe."
(The Arte of English Poesie) [SB]
"Let us die, and rush into the heart of the fight.
(Virgil, The Aeneid) [SB]
--“Put on your shoes and socks.” (unknown) [JP]

Invective
--"A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base,
proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound,
filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered,
action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing,
superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting
slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good
service, and art nothing but the composition of a
knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of
a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into a clamorous
whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy
addition." (Kent to Oswald, Act 2, scene 2, The Tragedy of King Lear) [AC]

Isocolon
-- His purpose was to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to confound the scrupulous. [PW]
--“Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot.” [AE]

Litotes
--“for life’s not a paragraph/ And death I think is no parenthesis” (e. e. cummings “since feeling is first”) [DM]
--“The Earth has not anything to show more fair” (Wordsworth’s "Sonnet on Westminster Bridge")  [JS]
--“That which I have told you is no lie.” [JS]
--“It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.” (J.D. Salinger The Catcher and the Rye) [JS]
--“Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree” [AE]
--He is standing in a slight drizzle with some acquaintances, as they engage in no small amount of discourse on a statue of no little renown in these admittedly remote parts. A bicyclist rides by in something less than an orderly fashion. Some trivial new event may occur soon. [BS]

Malapropism
--While waiting for my students to arrive for class today, was subjected to discussion between two of the gym staff in which one of them declared that the other's fascination with the skylight in the lobby was proof that "you're asphyxiated on it." [BS]

Maxim
--"Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated." --Anonymous [AC]
--If you expect to soar with the eagles during the day, you can't hoot with the owls at night. [BS]
--Too many cooks spoil the broth.  [SW]
--It takes a village to raise a child. [AT]

Meiosis
--“Pig”  for “policeman” [JW]
-- “quack” for “doctor” [SD]

Metaphor
"Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds."   (“To Waken an Old Lady,” William Carlos Williams) [SD]

Metonymy
--“You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before
the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round
the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!”
(Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave) [DM]
--“the Big House for Federal Prison” [AE]
--The pen is mightier than the sword. [BS]


Onomatopoeia
--The chug-a, chug-a, chug-a of the train echoed down the hill, while a cloud of smoke rose up to the heavens. [AB]
--"Like a drummer's brush,/the rain hushes the surface of tin porches." ("Rain" Emanuel di Pasquale) [JW]   

Oxymoron
--The child was bitterly sweet and annoyingly perfect. [HF]
--"The sullen room was brightly dark." (“Untitled” Jewel Kilcher)[SD]

Paralepsis
“The music, the service at the feast,
The noble gifts for the great and the small,
The rich adornment of Theseus’ palace…
All these things I do not mention now.”
(Chaucer, "The Knight’s Tale" from The Canterbury Tales) [GS]

Paranomasia
"If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, then let's all get wasted together and have the time of our lives." 
(sign at Armand's Pizza, Washington, D.C.) [CH]
--When he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush, while rebuffing his wife’s entreaties that he buy new formal wear for a fancy press dinner:  "Read my lips," Bush told his wife, Laura.  "No new tuxes."  [JM]
--“I like to see it lap the Miles-
And lick the Valleys up-
And stop to feed itself at Tanks-
And then-prodigious step”
(Emily Dickinson) [AM]
--"Don't Be Square" (advertisement for Rice Krispy Treats) [AJ]
--“Ask me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” – 
(Mercutio in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) [JP]
--Not being able to pun is a real PUNishment [SW]

Parataxis
--"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without
form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit and God moved upon
the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:1-2). [PW]

Parison
--" 'Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all."
(St. Augustine) [JE]

Paromoisosis
--"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities) [JE]

Personification
--"My lute, awake! Perform the last 
Labor that thou and I shall waste,"
(from "My lute, awake!" by Thomas Wyatt) [AC]
--“Red men embraced my body’s whiteness,
cutting into me carved it free,
sewed it tight with sinews taken
from lightfoot deer who leaped this stream-
now in my ghost-skin they glide over clouds
at home in the fish’s fallen heaven.”
(Carter Revard) [AM]

Phatic communion
--What’s going on? [JW]

Pleonasm
--“His biting is mortal. Those that do lie of it do seldom or never recover.”
(Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra) [GS]
--“Ears pierced while you wait”
“I have seen no stranger sight since I was born”
“Employees and friends and family of (Company) are not eligible for sweepstakes.”
“Shut down until further notice.” [JS]
--Grow up
Climb up
Vista View (name of development on the way to Bluffton) [AE]
--“I have seen no stranger sight since I was born.”- unknown [JP]

Ploce
--"It is hard to get through to a person's hard head."
"She rose to smell the rose." [LM]
--“Make war upon themselves-brother to brother, blood to blood, self against self.”
-Richard III, Act II [GS]
--“I shall call the guard.”
“Yes, but what (shall you call him)? They don’t take kindly to insults.”
(A Hard Day’s Night) [JA]

Polyptoton
--"The entire heart should love entirely one person."
"A godly person should work to please God."
"A poet's poetry should always sound poetic."
"The strong get stronger and the weak get weaker."
"Into deep sleep I fall, falling like leaves in winter." [LM]
--“Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood.”
(Shakespeare's Richard III, Act II [GS]
--"Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,/ Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;/ Let there bechance
him pitiful mischances,/ To make him moan but pity not his moans."
(The Rape of Lucrece) [SB]
"Which alters when its alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove."
(William Shakespeare, The Marriage of True Minds) [SB]
--" . . . in dying thou shalt surely die . . ."
(Gen 2:16-Heb). [SB]
--" But alas. . . the gate is narrow, the threshold high, few are chosen because few
choose to be chosen." (Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays) [PW]
--With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder. [BS]
--When I saw the saw,
Up came a thought.
I thought,
To make a poem is
Likened to building a building,
And
An endeavor to create either work
Will require much work.
First, you must
Begin to plan, how you
Will construct your plan.
Then,
Frame up your frame,
As soon as you can.
Sometimes,
The word-boards try to hide,
But you know that they're there.
As you
Hammer and measure, and think and write,
Pay attention to details, so you'll know that it's right.
Often,
You must decide how, and where to cut,
And then at last, painstakingly, make the cut.
But, ah,
When you've made it through,
And you're finally through,
And the last nail-period's been nailed,
And you've placed the last comma-braces in their places,
Then,
When you hear the thunderous storm
And the wind's eerie sound,
You can relax and rest in knowing
That your poem-house is sound.
("Building," by Jason Adkins)  [JA]
--the warm sun warmly filled my soul [SW]

Polysyndeton
--“And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,/
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,/ And
whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest
in his shroud,/ And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick
of the earth,/ And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod
confounds the learning of all times,/ And there is no trade or
employment but the young man following it may become a hero,/ And there
is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,/ And I
say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a
million universes.” (Walt Whitman “Song of Myself”) [DM]

Proverb (Contraries)
--“Practice makes perfect.” [AM]
--“You must never put off tomorrow what you can do today.”  (Unknown) [SD]

Running Style
--"My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."
(Hamlet, Shakespeare) [JW]
--“You’re both of you nuts. I know more about casino security than any man alive. I invented it and it cannot be beaten. They got cameras, they got watches, they got locks, they got timers, they got vaults, they got enough armed personnel to occupy Paris—okay, bad example.” (Elliot Gould in Ocean’s 11) [JA]

Simile
--Her eyes are like the morning dew.  [AT]

Spoonerism
--“I will make that phone call – I will make that cone fall” [AE]

Syllepsis
--"She gained a husband and twenty pounds." [LM]
--"stain her Honour, or her new Brocade?  . . . [Will she] lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a ball?"
(Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock)  [GS]
--“All for one and one for all” (Dumas, The Three Musketeers)
“Get in, get out, and get on with your life” Chile’s Restaurant
“Mow the lawn or I’m gonna mow your ass!” My Dad [JS]
--“We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately.”- Benjamin Franklin [JP]

Synathroesmus
--"and till action lust is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust…"
(from Sonnet 129, William Shakespeare) [AC]
--“Pig, you miserable, vomitus mass” (The Princess Bride) [JW]

Synechdoche
--Referring to workers as “hands”
Referring to cattle as “heads”
Politicians referred to as “the U.S.” (The U.S. meet with Israel ...) [JS]
--"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"
(Dr. Faustus) [SB]
“I’ll lend you a hand.” [SB]
--“Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach” (Phil. 3:19) [SB]
--"Take thy face hence." (Macbeth V, iii). [PW]

Tapinosis
--“quack” for “doctor”
“boob tube” for “television”
“chick” for “woman/ girl” [JS]
--calling the Mississippi river “a stream” [JP]

Testimony
--Ann said, she heard Nancy say, Mark said, he took the last bread. [AT]

Tetracolon Climax
--" that from these honored deed we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last fall measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these deed
shall not have deed in vain; that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
(conclusion of Lincoln's "The Gettysburg Address") [PW]
--"no voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet"
(John Keats' "Ode to Psyche") [AJ]

Tricolon
--"Motherhood requires patience, learning, and love." [LM]
--"That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
(The Constitution) [SB]
--"I'll give my jewels for a set of beads, 
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, 
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown, 
My figured goblets for a dish of wood . . . .."
(Shakespeare, Richard II, 3.3.170-73)  [SB]
--"We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
(Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address) [SB]
--"A man who marries a bad wife will be miserable, a man who marries a good wife will get a mix of good and
bad, and a man who is unmarried will be lonely, uncared-for, and without direct heirs." --Hesiod  [SB]
--"By three methods may we learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest." --Confucius [AC]
--"Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills" (Percy Shelley's "The Cloud") [AJ]
--A good husband is one that loves, worships, and adores every movement his wife makes. [HF]

Understatement
Hell is slightly uncomfortable and mildly hot and humid. [HF]

RETURN TO TERMS A-E
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English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
                             
updated 02 January 2005