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Glossary of Rhetorical Terms

effectio to gradatio

effectio [effictio]  
Personal description; head-to-toe inventory of a person's charms.
[from Latin effingere, "to fashion"]
-(See Shakespeare's Sonnet 130)
-"Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size . . .
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips . . .
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
The joy in my feet . . .
It's the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breast,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
That's me."
(Maya Angelou, "Phenomenal Woman")

ellipsis  
Omission of one or more words, which must be supplied by the listener or reader.
[Gk. "a falling short"]
-"If youth knew, if age could." (Henri Estienne)
-"True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love." (Raymond Queneau)
-"Twenty-two years old, weak, hot, frightened, not daring to acknowledge the fact that he didn't know who or what he was . . . with no past, no language, no tribe, no source, no address book, no comb, no pencil, no clock, no pocket handkerchief, no rug, no bed, no can opener, no faded postcard, no soap, no key, no tobacco pouch, no soiled underwear and nothing nothing nothing to do . . . he was sure of one thing only: the unchecked monstrosity
of his hands."
(Toni Morrison, Sula)

encomium   (pl., encomia) 
Eulogy in prose or verse glorifying people, objects, ideas, or events.
[Gk. "praise"]
(See Gray's "Hymn to Adversity" and Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty.")
-"Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content,
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto eternity. 
Blest babe . . .."
(Anne Bradstreet, "In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and Half Old")

energia
Generic term for a visually powerful description that vividly [enargia] recreates something or someone in words.
[Gk. "Vigor of style"]
-"Mornings, a transparent pane of ice lies over the meltwater. I peer through and see some kind of waterbug-perhaps a leech-paddling like a sea turtle between green ladders of lakeweed. Cattails and sweetgrass from the previous summer are bone dry, marked with black mold spots, and bend like elbows into the ice. They are swords that cut away the hard tenancy of winter. At the wide end a mat of dead waterplants has rolled back into a thick, impregnable breakwater. Near it, bubbles trapped under the ice are lenses focused straight up to catch the coming season."
(Gretel Ehrlich, "Spring")

enthymeme  (see Enthymemes) 
An informally stated syllogism with an implied premise.
(See Aristotle's discussion of enthymeme in Rhetoric.)
[Gk. "piece of reasoning"]
-"Mark'd ye his words? He would not take the crown. Therefore 'tis certain he was not ambitious."
( Julius Caesar III.ii)
-"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow
And soonest our best men with thee do go
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppies or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!"
(John Donne, "Holy Sonnet X")
- "In an enthymeme, the speaker builds an argument with one element removed, leading listeners to fill in the missing piece.  On May 1, speaking from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush said, 'The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on. . . . With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.'  This is classic enthymematic argumentation: We were attacked on Sept. 11, so we went to war against Iraq. The missing piece of the argument -- "Saddam was involved in 9/11" -- didn't have to be said aloud for those listening to assimilate its message."
(Paul Waldman, Washington Post, Sep. 2003)

epanalepsis
Repetition at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of the clause.
-"Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed."
(Robert Frost, "The Gift Outright")

epicrisis
Circumstance in which a speaker quotes a passage and comments on it.
[Gk. "judgment"]
-"When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone, whatever they  [Vichy France]  did, their generals told the Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.'  [pause] Some chicken! [pause] Some neck!"  
(Winston Churchill to Canadian Parliament in WWII)

epideictic  
(Pronunciation: "eh pi DIKE tick") 
One of Aristotle's major divisions of rhetoric: oratory that praises or blames.
--" . . . ADAMS and JEFFERSON, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed, they are no more.  They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head of the government; nor more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind.  They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country but throughout the civilized world. A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human kind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on by the laws which he discovered, and in the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of space.
"No two men now live, fellow-citizen, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed on mankind their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought.  Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep, it has sent them to the very centre; no storm, not of force to birth the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens. . . ."
(Daniel Webster, "On the Occasion of the Deaths of Adams and Jefferson" 1826)

epimone 
Frequent repetition of a phrase or question; dwelling on a point.
(Pronunciation: "eh PIM o nee") [Gk. "tarrying, delay"]
-"Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him I have offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman?  If any speak; for him have I offended."
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III.ii)
-"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel
every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room.
Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm
reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell; "I'm
beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.
     "Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you
have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the
yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.
     "Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book propped against the horse's mane, or maybe tied to the horse's ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrups, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.
      "Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion, or two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your
shoes off first. If you want to, put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don't stand there with your shoes in one
hand and the book in the other.
      "Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes. Do it now, because once you're absorbed in reading there will be no
budging you. Make sure the page isn't in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack
of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper gnawing
at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt
your reading. Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right,
you know best.  . . ."
(Italo Calvino, opening paragraphs of If on a winter's night a traveler)

epiphora 
Repetition of a word or phrase at the end of several clauses.  (Also known as epistrophe.)
-"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as child."
(I Corinthians 13.11)
-“Success hasn’t changed Frank Sinatra. When he was unappreciated and obscure, he was hot-tempered, egotistical, extravagant, and moody.  Now that he is rich and famous . . . he is still hot-tempered, egotistical, extravagant, and moody.”
(Dorothy Kilgallen, 1959 newspaper column)
-"It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them! . . .  You tell everybody.  Listen to me, Hatcher.   You've gotta tell them!  Soylent Green is people!  We've gotta stop them somehow!"
(Charlton Heston as Detective Thorn in Soylent Green, 1973)
-"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
(Bill Clinton)
-“Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot.  Give me a caring idiot.  Give me a sensitive idiot.  Just don’t give me the same idiot.” 
(Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, speaking to CBS about FEMA Chief Michael Brown on Sep. 6, 2005)

epiplexis
Asking questions to reproach rather than to elicit answers.
[Gk. "rebuke"]
-"Have you no shame?"
-"You think what I do is playing God, but you presume you know what God wants.   Do you think that's not playing God?" 
(John Irving, The Cider House Rules)

epithet 
Using an appropriate adjective (often habitually) to qualify a subject.
-"heartfelt thanks,"  "wine-red sea,"  "blood-red sky," "fleet-footed Achilles," "stone-cold heart" 
-"The snotgreen sea.  The scrotumtightening sea."  (James Joyce, Ulysses)

epizeuxis 
Repetition of a word for emphasis (usually with no words in between).
[Gk. "A fastening together"]
-"And my poor fool is hanged!  No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all?  Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button." (William Shakespeare, King Lear, V.3)
-"O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon." (Milton, Samson Agonistes, 80)
-"Break, break, break
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea:" (Tennyson)
-Waitress: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Bloody vikings. You can't have egg, bacon, spam and sausage without the spam.
Mrs. Bun: I don't like spam!
Mr. Bun: Shh dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.
(Monty Python, "The Spam Sketch")

erotesis [erotema]
Rhetorical question implying strong affirmation or denial..
-"Was I an Irishman on that day that I boldly withstood our pride?
or on the day that I hung down my head and wept in shame and silence over the humiliation of Great Britain?"
(Edmund Burke, Speech in the Electors of Bristol)
-"II Kings 7:3 contains an example of the figure of speech erotesis.   Four leprous men at the entering of the gate of the city asked: 'Why sit we here until we die?'  The question was not asked for an answer but rather for effect. It means literally:  'There is no sense of our sitting around here until we die!'   Erotesis - (rhetorical questions) - are used to emphasize the literal truth.   By using this figure Jesus Christ put extra emphasis on his cry of triumph: THIS WAS MY DESTINY!"
(Michael Cortright, 1997)

ethopoeia
Putting oneself in place of another so as to both understand and express his or her feelings more vividly.
(Pronunciation: "ee tho PO ee ya")
(See Kenneth Burke's discussion of identification in A Rhetoric of Motives.)
-"I feel an extraordinary kinship with this aging statesman [Daniel Webster], this massive victim of pollinosis whose declining days sanctioned the sort of compromise that is born of local irritation. There is a fraternity of those who have been tried beyond endurance. I am closer to Daniel Webster, almost, than to my own flesh."
(E. B. White, "The Summer Catarrh")

ethos 
Persuasive appeal based on the projected character of the speaker or narrator.  Ethical proof is proof that depends upon the good character or projected character of a rhetor.  According to Aristotle, the chief components of a compelling ethos are good will, practical wisdom, and virtue.   Distinctions are commonly made between situated ethos and invented ethos.  Discussions of ethos can be found at Wikipedia, laborlawtalk.com, and the University of Arizona.
[Gk. "Disposition, character"]
(See Aristotle's discussion of ethos in Chapter Two of Book One of Rhetoric.)

euphemism   
Substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
[Gk. "use of good words"]
-"Fertilizer" for "manure"; "manure" for "shit."
-"Ground beef" for "ground flesh of a dead cow"; "veal" for "tender dead flesh of a baby cow."
-"Wardrobe malfunction" (Justin Timberlake's characterization of his tearing of Janet Jackson's costume during a half-time performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII)

euphuism  
Elaborately patterned prose style, characterized by extensive use of simile and illustration, balanced construction, alliteration, and antithesis.  Euphuism played an important role in English literary history by demonstrating the capabilities of English prose.
[Gk, "graceful, witty"]
[From John Lyly's ornately florid Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit.]
-"This young gallant, of more wit than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom, seeing himself inferior to none in pleasant conceits, thought himself superior to all in honest conditions, insomuch that he thought himself so apt to all things that he gave himself almost to nothing; but practicing of those things commonly which are incident to these sharp wits: fine phrases, smooth quips, merry taunts, using jesting without mean and abusing mirth without measure. As, therefore, the sweetest rose hath his prickle, the finest velvet his brack, the fairest flour his bran, so the sharpest wit hath his wanton will, and the holiest head his wicked way. And true it is that some men write and most men believe that, in all perfect shapes, a blemish bringeth rather a liking every way to the eyes than a loathing any way to the mind.  . . .  The freshest colours soonest fade, the teenest razor soonest turneth his edge, the finest cloth is soonest eaten with moths, and the cambric sooner stained than the coarse canvas: which appeared well in this Euphues, whose wit, being like wax, apt to receive any impression, and bearing the head in his own hand, either to use the rein or the spur, disdaining counsel, leaving his country, loathing his old acquaintance, thought either by wit to obtain some conquest, or by shame to abide some conflict; who, preferring fancy before friends and his present humour before honour to come, laid reason in water, being too salt for his taste, and followed unbridled affection, most pleasant for his tooth.   . . ."
(John Lyly, from Euphues, 1579)
-"Their hair was a light-golden colour, thickly fringed in front, hiding in many cases the furrows of a life of vice; behind, reared coils, some of which differed in hue, exhibiting the fact that they were on patrol for the price of another supply of dye . . ..   The elegance of their attire had the glow of robbery--the rustle of many a lady's silent curse.  These tools of brazen effrontery were strangers to the blush of innocence that tinged many a cheek, as they would gather round some of God's ordained, praying in flowery words of decoying Cockney, that they should break their holy vows by accompanying them to the halls of adultery.  Nothing daunted at the staunch refusal of different divines, whose modest walk was interrupted by their bold assertion of loathsome rights, they moved on, while laughs of hidden rage and defeat flitted across their doll-decked faces, to die as they next accosted some rustic-looking critics, who, tempted with their polished twang, their earnest advances, their pitiful entreaties, yielded, in their ignorance of the ways of a large city, to their glossy offers, and accompanied, with slight hesitation, these artificial shells of immorality to their homes of ruin, degradation and shame."  
(Amanda McKittrick Ros, Delina Delaney, 1898)

exergasia
Elaboration of a single idea in a series of figures of speech.
[Gk. "working out"]
-"I take thy hand--this hand,
As soft as dove's down and as white as it,
Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow that's bolted
By the northern blasts twice o'er."
(Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale IV. iv)
-"A child said to me WHAT IS THE GRASS?
fetching it to me with full hands;
. . . I guess it must be the flag of my
disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say WHOSE?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means,
Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman,
Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."
(Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself")
-"I don't want loyalty.  I want loyalty.  I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.  I want his pecker in my pocket."  (Lyndon Baines Johnson)

exuscitatio 
Emotional utterance that seeks to move hearers to a like feeling. 
[L. "awakening, arousing"]
-"He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
Will stand a tiptoe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian,
He that shall live this day and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, 'Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day.  Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Belford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son:
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England, now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispian's day.
(William Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.3)

fable
Fictional story meant to teach a moral lesson.   (See FABLES at PROGYMNASMATA.)
-"A FAMISHED FOX saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them.  At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying: 'The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought.'"
(The Fox and the Grapes, from Aesop's Fables)
-"A FOX, seeing some sour grapes hanging within an inch of his nose, and being unwilling to admit that there was anything he would not eat, solemnly declared that they were out of his reach."
("The Fox and the Grapes," by Ambrose Bierce)

figures of speech
Traditionally defined as the various uses of language that depart from customary construction, order, or significance.  Quintilian (anticipating a tenet of poststructuralism) concluded that all language must be figurative, for rhetoric is the shape (form), or figure, of the linguistic expression, and all thoughts must take on some particular form in order to be uttered" (Institutio Oratoria).   "[The] lack of a settled terminology, and in short, the endless variations in enumerating and defining the figures, are to be explained historically by contacts between various schools [i.e., Greek, Roman, Renaissance]" (Curits, European Literature of the Latin Middle Ages).  "The vast pool of terms for verbal ornamentation has acted like a gene pool for the rhetorical imagination, stimulating us to look at language in another way.  Doesn't rhetorical terminology work in much this way, testifying to a kind of verbal attention which looks at the verbal surface rather than through it?  The figures have worked historically to teach a way of seeing . . .." (Richard Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms). 
-"'The first lady [of Maryland, Kendel Ehrlich] is a working mother raising a young son.  She made an inadvertent figure of speech expressing her concerns about the influence of pop culture on children,' Mrs. Ehrlich's spokeswoman, Meghann Siwinski, said Tuesday."  This was the "figure of speech" that Mrs. Ehrlich offered at a domestic violence prevention conference in October 2003: "You know, really, if I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would." 
-"Because of the Anagrams dispute it has been decided to devote the rest of this space to a page specially written for people who like figures of speech, for the not a few fans of litotes, and those with no small interest in meiosis, for the infinite millions of hyperbole-lovers, for those fond of hypallage, and the epithet's golden transfer, for those who fall willingly into the arms of the metaphor, those who give up the ghost, bury their heads in the sand and ride roughshod over the mixed metaphor, and even those of hyperbaton the friends. It will be too, for those who reprehend the malapropism; who love the wealth of metonymy; for all friends of rhetoric and syllepsis; and zeugmatists with smiling eyes and hearts. It will bring a large absence of unsatisfactory malevolence to periphrastic fans; a wig harm bello to spoonerists; and in no small measure a not less than splendid greeting to you circumlocutors. The World adores prosopopeiasts, and the friendly faces of synechdotists, and can one not make those amorous of anacoluthon understand that if they are not satisfied by this, what is to happen to them? It will attempt to really welcome all splitters of infinitives, all who are Romeo and Juliet to antonomasia, those who drink up similes like sparkling champagne, who lose nothing compared with comparison heads, self-evident axiomists, all pithy aphorists, apothegemists, maximiles, theorists, epigrammatists and even gnomists. And as for the lovers of aposiopesis -- ! It will wish bienvenu to all classical adherents of euphuism, all metathesistic birds, golden paranomasiasts covered in guilt, fallacious paralogists, trophists, anagogists, and anaphorists; to greet, welcome, embrace asyndeton buffs, while the lovers of ellipsis will be well-met and its followers embraced, as will be chronic worshippers of catachresis and supporters of anastrophe the world over." (Monty Python, "The Announcement for People Who Like Figures of Speech")

gradatio
The last word(s) of one clause becomes the first of the next, through three or more clauses (an extended form of anadiplosis).
(See climax.)
-"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." (St. Paul, Romans 5:3)
-"All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God."
(T. S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock")

English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist.
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912-921-5991
e-mail: engl5730@lycos.com          

15 Jan 2008