updated 14 March 2005
65 RHETORICAL TERMS WITH EXAMPLES

(With examples provided by students enrolled in ENGL 5730 in Spring 2002 and submitted--in phase one--by the evening of Jan. 29 and--in phase two--by Feb. 5th.   For the sake of variety--and, in a few cases, accuracy--some examples have been matched with terms other than those originally submitted.)

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.

Accumulation
--"There is a time for being ahead,
a time for geing behind,
a time for being in motion,
a time for beng at rest,
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted,
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger."  (Tao) [AW]

Allegory
A modern example of political allegory is George Orwell's novel Animal Farm (1945), which, under the guise of a fable about domestic animals, expresses the author's disillusionment with the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution and shows how one tyrannical system of government in Russia was merely replaced by another.

Alliteration
--"Of Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum
monegum maegthum meodo-setla ofteah."
(Beowulf)
--"The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

Ambiguity
"I can't tell you how excited I am for you."  [PHK]

Anadiplosis
--"A great nation is like a great man, Whe he makes a mistake, he realizes it.  Having realized it he admits it.  Having admitted
it, he corrects it.  He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.  He thinks of his enemy, as the
shadow that the himself casts.  (Tao) [AW]
--Simonides calls painting silent poetry, and poetry speaking painting. (Plutarch) [JM]
|--"The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!"
(John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale")
-- "It would rot there in a year --rot and stink.  
Rot and stink-- and at that stage become holy."
(Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth) [AM]

Analogy
--"Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.  And Cameron would worry that he'd owe taxes on it."  (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)

Anaphora
--"Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink."
(Coleridge, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner") [AS]
--"and i knew the meaning of it all
and i knew the distance to the sun
and i knew the echo that is love
and i knew the secrets in your spires
and i knew the emptiness of youth
and i knew the solitude of heart
and i knew the murmurs of the soul
and the world is drawn into your hands
and the world is etched upon your heart
and the world so hard to understand
(Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, "Muzzle") [MM]
--"Crazy, I'm crazy for feeling so lonely,
I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so blue,
I'm crazy for trying,
and crazy for crying,
and I'm crazy for loving you.  
(Willie Nelson, "Crazy") [AB]

Antiphrasis
--You're pretty damn ugly. [MS]
--Don't you set down on the steps/'cause you finds it's kinder hard."
(Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son") [JK]

Antithesis
--"Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad."
(Christina Rossetti, "Remember")
--"Every man dies, but not every man lives."
(William Wallace, Braveheart) [JR]
--"Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is."
(Steve Martin) [JS]

Apophasis
"I don't ask for forgiveness--just understanding." [CH]

Aporia
"I do not know which to prefer,/The beauty of inflections/Or the beauty of innuendoes,/The blackbird whistling/Or just after."
(Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird")  [CH]

Apostrophe
--"Western wind, when wilt thou blow?"
(Anonymous) [RN]
--"Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
(William Blake, "Tiger")

Apposition
--"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
--"Miniver Cheevy, CHILD OF SCORN,/ grew lean while he assailed the seasons."
(E.A. Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy") [EV]

Asyndeton
--""It seemed to him that he could actually see the deer, the buck, smoke-colored, elongated with speed, vanished,
the woods, the gray solitude still ringing."  (William Faulkner, Go Down Moses) [JW]
--"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and
the success of liberty."  (John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address) [JM].

Auxesis
--"Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new."
(John Donne) [LT]
--"But all the time
I've been a-climbing on
and reachin' landin's
and turnin' corners."
(Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son") [JK]

Bdelygmia
"Puppies, $20.  Mother, reg. Sheltie.  Father sly, small, black, unethical, under-the-fence-digging dog."  [JM]

Categoria
--"In President Bush’s State’s Address, he openly admitted that the economy was horrible, the World was under a reign
of terror and our traditional values are being attacked; this in his very first year!"  
(Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show") [DW]

Chiasmus
--"The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart."  (Benjamin Franklin)  [AB]
--"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" (Keats) [LT]
--"It's not the men in your life that counts; it's the life in your men."
(Mae West) [RN]

Cliche
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."   [PHK]
--Don't bite off more than you can chew." [AM]

Climax
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.  Only through experience of trial and suffering can the
soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved."  (Helen Keller) [CA]

Commoratio
--"and the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less.
Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither
count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be
reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thou foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff
it."  (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) [MM]
--"Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed,
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
(William Blake, "The Lamb") [CA]

Dehortatio
--"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!"
(Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life")
--"Good night--but go not to my uncle's bed."   (Shakespeare, Hamlet) [AS]

Diacope
"Give me my drink!   Damn You...give me my drink!" [RC]

Ellipsis
"Success comes in cans, failures in can'ts." [CA]  

Encomium
--"O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages . . .."
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Milton (Alcaics)" [CLL]
--"Soft fall the sounds of Eden
           Upon her puzzled ear --
           Oh what an afternoon for Heaven,
           When 'Bronte' entered there!"
(Emily Dickinson) [AM]
--But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living
and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor
long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
(Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address") [BS]

Enthymeme
--"My ambition is to be president despite the fact that I am a Catholic."
(Allen Ginsberg, "America") [JV].

Epiphora
--"Octavia: "Who made him a cheap at Rome, but Cleopatra?
              Who made him scorned abroad, but Cleopatra?           
              At Actium, who betrayed him? Cleopatra.          
              Who made his children orphans, and poor me           
              A wretched widow? Only Cleopatra."
Cleopatra: "Yet she who loves him best is Cleopatra."
(John Dryden, All for Love)
--"We think of the KEY, each in his PRISON/ Thinking of the KEY, each confirms a PRISON." [EV]

Epiplexis
--"What, quite unmanned in folly?"  (Shakespeare, Macbeth)  [AS]
--"Stop thinking and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!" (Tao) [AW]

Epithet
-- "sincere apologies" [LAL]
-- "free gift"
-- "beautiful princess"
-- "the honest truth"

Epizeuxis
--"You, you, you, you,
you, you, you, you, you, you, you,
I wanna talk about me!"
(Toby Keith, "I Wanna Talk about Me")  [AB]
--"Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,/ And thought about it."
(E. A. Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy") [EV]

Gradatio
--"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." (Romans 5:3-5)

Hyperbaton
--"Miniver scorned the gold he sought,/ BUT SORE ANNOYED WAS HE WITHOUT IT."  
(E. A. Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy") [EV]

Hypophora
--"Octavia: "Who made him a cheap at Rome, but Cleopatra?
              Who made him scorned abroad, but Cleopatra?           
              At Actium, who betrayed him? Cleopatra.          
              Who made his children orphans, and poor me           
              A wretched widow? Only Cleopatra."
Cleopatra: "Yet she who loves him best is Cleopatra."
(John Dryden, All for Love)
--Why am I here? To retrieve what is mine.  Why are you leaving?  So you can continue to live." [RC]

Hysteron Proteron
"Put on your shoes and socks."

Induction
--The night before the math test I ate pizza and passed with an A.
The night before the science test I ate pizza and passed with an A.  
So, whenever I eat pizza before a test I will pass with an A. [CH]

Irony
--"Miniver cursed the commonplace/ And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; /HE MISSED THE MEDIEVAL GRACE/ OF IRON
CLOTHING."  (E. A. Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy") [EV]

Isocolon
--"She woke, she dressed, she left." [AM]
--"The more you have the more you want." [KM]

Litotes
--"She's no spring chicken."
--"Not bad, eh?"

Malapropism
--"I'd like you to meet my daughter's fiasco."  [JK]
--"Make no delusions to the past."
(Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Sherida, The Rivals)
--"I demand a salary commiserate with my experience." [JM]
--"The captain christianed the ship with a bottle of champagne."  [KM]

Maxim
--"A man flattened by an opponent can get up again.  A man flattened by conformity stays down for good."
(Thomas Watson, Jr.) [CA]
"Old people are fond of giving good advice; it consoles them for no longer being capable of setting a bad example."
(La Rochefoucauld) [JK]
"The fool speaks; the wise man listens."  [ML]
"Don't do anything today that you can't sleep with tonight." (Larry Redmond) [JR]

Meiosis
"fuzz" for "police" and "chick" for girl [BS]
"jarhead" for U.S. Marine [CLL]
"hicks" or "crackers" for Southerners [MS]
"ambulance chaser" for lawyer [PD]

Metaphor
--" . . . [F]ifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby) [TW]
--"O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does the life destroy."
(William Blake, "The Sick Rose") [MM]
--"Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

It is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire
(Margaret Atwood, "Habitation") [RN]
--"Tiny seeds carried in the air, dance on the windy stage." [KM]

Metonymy
--"Iraq has not yet responded to recent threats from the White House."
-- use of "iron" for  "sword" in Beowulf
--"The pen is mightier than the sword."
--"In the sweat of thy face [i.e., hard labor] shall thou eat thy bread."
--'"Rent a flat above a shop / Cut your hair and get a job /
Smoke some fags and play some pool / Pretend you never went to school."
(Jarvis Cocker, "Common People")

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]

Oxymoron
--Act naturally."  [CLL]
--"O brawling love! O loving hate!....   
    O heavy lightness! serious vanity!           
    Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!           
    Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!           
    Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!           
    This love feel I, that feel no love in this."
(Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet))
--deafening silence  [AM]

Parable
--"Remember the story about the cat who lived in a house that had 12 doors opening on the outside?  During the winter, the cat
would go to a door and meow to be let out.  The man would open it, and the cat, seeing the snow and cold outside, would walk to
another door.  The cat was always looking for the door into summer.  It kept at it long enough so that eventually a door
opened and it was summertime outside."  [JM]
--"Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured
them.  Some fell on the stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no
depth of earth.  But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.  And some fell
among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.  But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: Some a hundred
fold, some sixty, some thirty.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"  (Matthew 13, King James Bible) [CLL]

Paradox
"We talked with each other about each other/though neither of us spoke--"
(Emily Dickinson) [CH]

Parallelism
--"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."
(Frederick Douglas) [MC]

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]
--"Why do we wait until a pig is dead to 'cure' it?"

Personification
--"My car and I had a long talk about not dying until I could afford to buy a new one." [MS]
--"The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet."
(Smashing Pumpkins, "Thirty-three") [MM]

Ploce
--"Your argument is sound--all sound."  (Benjamin Franklin)
--"Get all you can, can all you get, then sit on the can."  [JR]
--"there will be a time, there will be a time,
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"  
(T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock") [JW]
--"And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
(Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods")

Polyptoton
--"Why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway?"
(Jerry Seinfeld)  [LP]
--"Choosy moms choose Jif." [JS]
--"He didn't fight
He hadn't hought at all."
(Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish") [JK]

Polysyndeton
--"There are three things that, until one occurs, are always uncertain: illness or old age or swords edge can deprive a doomed man of his life."  (The Seafarer) [BS]
--What is a Montague?  It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man."
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) [AB]
--"On the sideboard were arrayed dishes and plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons."
(James Joyce, "The Dead") [JW]
-- I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea. / I leap out, and fall back, / and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone / in the great storm."  (Rainer Maria Rilke, "Sense of Something Coming") [MH]

Proverb (Contraries)
--"All good things come to those who wait," but "Time and tide wait for no man."
--"Opposites attract," but "Birds of a feather flock together."
--"Look before you leap," but "He who hesitates is lost."
--"Too many cooks spoil the broth," but "Many hands make light work."
--"Silence is golden," but "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."
--"The pen is mightier than the sword," but "Actions speak louder than words."
--"Faith will move mountains," but "Doubt is the beginning of wisdom."

Rhetorical Question
"How far at last will you abuse our patience, Catiline?  And how long will that wretched madness of yours elude us?  When will you
stop vaunting your unbridled audacity . . . ?"
(Cicero,  "In Catilinam Oratio ") [EV]

Running Style
--"Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent.  He had not been unhappy all day.  This was different though.  Now things were
done.  There had been this to do.  Now it was done.  It had been a hard trip.  He was very tired.  That was done.  He had made his
camp.  He was settled.  Nothing could touch him.  It was a good place to camp.  He was there, in the good place.  He was in his
home where he had made it.  Now he was hungry."
(Ernest Hemingway, "Big Two-Hearted River, Part I") [EV]
--"He could feel it under his feet. [The train] came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing groundshudder watching it till it was gone."
(Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses)  [JV]

Simile
--The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket.  
(Incubus, "I Wish You Were Here") [CA]
--"And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
(Longfellow, "The Day Is Done")
--"My hair is bold like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."
(Emily Dickinson)
--"O my luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune!"
(Robert Burns, "A Red, Red Rose") [BS]
--"The heat streamed down like a million hot arrows, smiting all things living upon the earth."  
(Zora Neale Hurston) [JW]
-- "A bat flitted before his face like a circling flake of velvety blackness."
(Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness) [JV]
--"Like brooms of steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street, . . ."
(Emily Dickinson)

Spoonerism
"Stop nicking your pose." [CS]

Syllepsis
"I asked myself these puzzling questions in a patrol car on a chilly Savannah night, littered with stars and resolutions." [JV]

Synathroesmus
--"One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb."  
(Stephen Crane, "The Blue Hotel") [EV]
--"Grunting, straining, moaning, perspiring, the old man passed some graphite into the toilet bowl."  [CS]
--"Politics in Virginia are cheap, ignorant, parochial, idiotic"  
(H.L. Mencken, "The Sahara of the Bozart") [JW]

Synechdoche
--"Gray beards" for "old men" [BS]
--use of "keel" for "ship" in Beowulf
--"The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
--"A hungry stomach has no ears." (Turkish proverb)

Testimony
"That reminds me, this one time, when I was at band camp . . .."
(American Pie) [KW]

Tetracolon Climax
--"If there be sorrow
Then let it be

For things undone...
Undreamed...
Unrealized...

To these add one:
Love withheld; restrained."  (Mari Evans) [MC]
--"Virginia has no art, no literature, no philosophy, no mind or aspiration of her own."  
(H. L. Mencken, "The Sahara of the Bozart"). [JW]
--"Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour- of youth!  A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and- Goodbye! - Night- Goodbye!"
(Joseph Conrad, Youth) [JV]

Tricolon
"…There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger."
(Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speech after the bombing at Pearl Harbor) [JS]
----The contestants all exibit beauty, style, and grace."  [LAL]

Vehicle
"The guts of this metaphor is the word guts."  [DW]

Zeugma
--At long last his age had earned him fiscal freedom, and poverty.  [EV]
--"We consumers like names that reflect what the economy does.  We know, for example, that International Business Machines makes business machines; and Ford Motors makes Fords; and Sara Lee makes us fat."  [RN]
--"Wine comes in at the mouth/And love comes in at the eye."
(W. B. Yeats, "A Drinking Song") [RN]
--"But passion lends them power, time means, to meet
Tempering extremities with extreme sweet."
(Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

Q & A

SYNECDOCHE AND METONYMY
From Phil Murphy: "Can you tell me whether the words synecdoche and metonymy mean the same thing?"

English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912/921 5991



                                       

14 March 2005