George Fitz-George

Question 1

Antiperistasis

Answer 1

The heightening of the force of an opposing process - rapid reaction to a threat, when one thing creates an action in its opposite. I.e. a strong West reaction to an aggressive Putin.

Question 2

Bowdlerize

Answer 2

Remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective.

“every edition of his letters and diaries has been bowdlerized”

Question 3

Mote

Answer 3

something, especially a piece of dust, that is so small it is almost impossible to see. A tiny piece of a substance.

Question 4

Uomo universale

Answer 4

The many-sided man

Question 5

Bathos

Answer 5

An effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.
“his epic poem has passages of almost embarrassing bathos”

Question 6

Extemporiser

Answer 6

To do or perform (something) without prior preparation or practice: extemporized an acceptance speech. To perform an act or utter something in an impromptu manner; improvise: “[When] the house lights dimmed, she could no longer read what she had written and was forced to extemporize”

Question 7

Rhetoric

Answer 7

The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing.

Question 8

Homeoteleuta

Answer 8

homeoteleuton (plural homeoteleuta or homeoteleutons)

The repetition of endings in words; near rhyme. quotations ▼
The accidental omission, when copying a text, of a passage between repeated words or phrases, as the eye skips from one to the next without noticing the words between.

Question 9

Oxymoron

Answer 9

A combination of contradictory words
An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase that creates an ostensible self-contradiction.

O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity!
Misshapen 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.[11]

Question 10

Asyndeton

Answer 10

Asyndeton (UK: /æˈsɪndɪtən, ə-/, US: /əˈsɪndətɒn, ˌeɪ-/;[1][2] from the Greek: ἀσύνδετον, “unconnected”, sometimes called asyndetism) is a literary scheme in which one or several conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses.[3][4] Examples include veni, vidi, vici and its English translation “I came, I saw, I conquered”.

Question 11

Prefatory

Answer 11

Introductory, serving as an introduction.

Question 12

Idiosyncratic

Answer 12

An unusual fearure or odd habit if someone. A person’s eccentricity or peculiarities.

Question 13

Recondite

Answer 13

Little known, abstruse, obscure

Question 14

Loquacity

Answer 14

Talkativeness, talking a lot or a great deal

Question 15

Maladroit.

Answer 15

Bungling, inefficient or inept.. Clumsy.

Question 16

Afflatus

Answer 16

A divine creative impulse or inspiration.

Question 17

Diatribe

Answer 17

A forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something:

Question 18

Rhetoric

Answer 18

The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques:

Question 19

Homeoteleuton

Answer 19

The use of word-endings that are similar or the same, either intentionally for rhetorical effect or by mistake during copying of text.

Question 20

Asyndeton

Answer 20

The omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence, as in I came, I saw, I conquered: [count noun] : syntactically unmarked but semantically connected asyndeta.

Question 21

Bloviate

Answer 21

A style of empty pompous political speech (U S origin Ohio).

US President Warren G Harding - ‘The art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing’