updated 05 March 2005
RHETORICAL TERMS WITH EXAMPLES: 2005
beginning H-Z
Contributors
Rob Thomas
Kirsten Mullis
Julia Vanlerberghe
Arthur Tanny
Tanja Supon
Kelley Sanders
Katie Sanders
Oakley Julian
Dee Dee Coursey
Alicia Ferrell
Heather Glover
Chris Shirley
Patrice Beavers
Chris McCormick
Ariana Siennick
Pamela Melton
Christi Healan
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TERMS H-Z Continued
Alicia Ferrell
144) Synathroesmus: (minimally)
“Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
"So that after six hundred years of destruction on the
Island of Pelan, they had grafted away the black, grafted
away the brown, grafted away the yellow, so that
all they had left was a pale-skinned, blue-eyed,
blonde-haired thing that you call a man."
Malcolm X: Black Man’s History Speech
145) Polyptoton:
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
Allen Ginsburg: “A Supermarket in California”
146) Hypophora:
Now, how do they pay for that deficit? First, by taking the Social Security surplus that comes in every month and endorsing the checks of working people over to me to pay for the tax cut. But it's not enough, so then they have to go borrow money.
Bill Clinton: 2004 Democratic National Convention Address
147) Tetracolon Climax:
“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.”
Langston Hughes: “Theme for English B”
148) Homoioiteleuton:
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless,
Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm
hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not
light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
“Kaddish, Part 1” Allen Ginsberg
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Heather
L. Glover
“Brothers and Sisters, I
take my text this morning from the Book of Dixie.... Now it says here, ‘And every
white man shall be allowed to pet himself a Negro. Yea, he shall take a black man unto
himself to pet and cherish, and this same Negro shall be perfect in his sight.’”
--Zora Neale Hurston, “The ‘Pet’ Negro System”
150) Invective (
(Humbert doesn't really
"cast blame"--he luxuriates in his crime.)
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My
sin, my soul…Did she have a precursor? She
did, indeed she did. I point of fact, there
might have no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About
as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy
prose style.”
--Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
I always want to lay here. And she
moves her arm up and I push my head down by her side.
And I will crawl in and make room for myself. My
heart can be the one that beats.
And hers has stopped.
Damn him to the bottom of hell damn him.
--Ellen, who blames her father for the death of her mother, in Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
“Secret Asian Man” (for
“Secret Agent Man” by Johnny Rivers)
“I Can’t Help It if I’m
Stiff in Love with You” (for “I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love with You” by Conway Twitty)
“Ain’t No Woman Like the
One-Eyed Got” (for “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got” by the Four Tops)
“Although We’ve Come to the
End of the Roach” (for “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men)
“Jim Dandy to the Restroom”
(for “Jim Dandy to the Rescue” by Lavern Baker)
“…and the rockets’ red
glare, bunch of bombs in the air,
gave proof through the night that we
still had our flag.”
--Leslie Nielsen, Naked Gun
152) Hyperbole and 153)
Hypophora
“My dear Colin, do you know what is
causing the rustling of the trees you hear? It
is my immense sigh of relief.”
--Michael Manley, then the Prime Minister of Jamaica, to Colin Powell after Powell and his wife survived a crash in a Jamaican
helicopter (from
Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey)
154) Hypotaxis and 155)
Running Style
“It rasped her, though, to have
stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted
down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or
quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which,
especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave
her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, friendship, in being well, in being
loved and making her home delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a
monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply of content were nothing but self
love! this hatred!”
--Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
156) This passage also
contains an example of hyperbaton
because of the phrase “never to be content quite, or quite secure.”
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Chris
Shirley
All examples are from “Hotel
California” by The Eagles.
157) Irony- Use of words to
convey the opposite of their literal meaning.
“You can check out anytime you
like/ but you can never leave”
158) Isocolon- A succession
of phrases of approximately equal length and corresponding structure.
“Any time of year/ any time of
year/ you can find it here/ you can find it here”
159) Metaphor-An implied
comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
“Her mind is Tiffany twisted”
“Hotel California”
“So I called up the Captain/ please
bring me my wine/ he said/ we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969”
160) Mondegreen-The
mishearing of a popular phrase or song lyric.
“...Cool whip in my hair/ warm
smell of cool ritas…” for “…Cool wind in my hair/ warm smell of
colitis…”
161) Paramoisosis-
(Let's call it "rhyme" and reserve paramoisosis for what's
sometimes called "half rhyme") Parallelism of sound
between two words of two clauses approximately equal in size.
“Such a lovely place/ such a lovely
face”(This is also isocolon)
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Patrice
Beavers
162) Polypototon:
“I so can sing in seasons fair;
That who hat felt may feel again.”
Coventry Patmore, The
Angel in the House
163) Paradox: (and antithesis)
Imaginatively she is of the highest
importance; practically she is completely insignificant.
Virginia
Woolf, A Room of Ones Own
164) Spoonerism:
“Bake the hall on the candle of her
brain.”
Princess
Melora, Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince
Translation:
Break the ball on the handle of her cane.
165) Tapinosis:
The
time has come when the darkies have to part:
Then my old Kentucky home,
good night!
Stephen Collins Foster, My old
Kentucky Home
166) Pleonasm:
Let
the singing singers
With vocal voices, most vociferous,
In sweet vociferation out-vociferize
Even sound itself.
Henry Carey, Chrononhotonthologos.
Act i. Sc. 1.
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Chris McCormick
167) isocolon
A succession of phrases of approximately equal length and corresponding structure.
168) parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
169) parison
Corresponding structure in a series of clauses, either of same word to same word, or
adjective to adjective, noun to noun, etc. or equal length of clause or sentence.
“I
wanted to avoid violence, I want to avoid violence. Nonviolence is the first article of my
faith. It is also the last article of my creed.”
-Gandhi defending his faith to an Indian court in 1922.
170) understatement
Figure in which a rhetor deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious
than it is.
171) litotes
Understatement used deliberately, or the expression of an affirmative by the negation of
its opposite.
172)
parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
“My
first contact with British authority in that country was not of a happy character. I
discovered that as a man and as an Indian I had no rights. More correctly, I discovered
that I had no rights because I was an Indian.”
-Gandhi defending his faith to an Indian court in
1922.
173) persona
Voice or mask that author puts on for a particular purpose.
174a)
refutation
The part of a discourse wherein a rhetor anticipates opposing arguments and answers them.
“The
law itself in this country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased
examination of the Punbjab Martial Law cases has led me to believe that at least 95
percent of convictions were wholly bad. My experience of political cases in India leads
me to the conclusion that nine out of every ten the condemned men were totally
innocent.”-Gandhi defending his faith to an Indian court in 1922.
175a)
induction
Method of reasoning by which a rhetor collects a number of instances and forms a
generalization that is meant to apply to all instances.
“No
sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many
villages present”
-Gandhi defending his faith to an Indian court in 1922.
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TERMS A-G BEGIN HERE.
TERMS H-Z BEGIN HERE & CONCLUDE HERE.
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English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard
Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
updated 05 March 2005