Rhetoric Devices Flashcards
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” –Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Anaphora
“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.” –John Milton, “Paradise Lost”
Antithesis
“In education we find the measure of our own ignorance; in ignorance we find the beginning of wisdom.”
Anadiplosis
“Drugs don’t just destroy their victims; they destroy entire families, schools, and communities.” –Elizabeth Dole
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
(Winston Churchill)
Conduplicatio
is a rhetorical term for the repetition of one or more words in successive clauses. Also called reduplicatio or reduplication.
“That sword was not useless / to the warrior now.” –Beowulf
Litotes ˈlī-tə-ˌtēz
understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary (as in “not a bad singer” or “not unhappy”)
Democracy demands responsibility, tyranny demands obedience.
Parallelism
An optimist sees as opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
“Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.”
Chiasmus
an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases
First-century Jerusalem was a truly multilingual city with Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew all competing to be heard.
Asyndeton
omission of the conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words or clauses (as in “I came, I saw, I conquered”)
(such as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (such as society for high society), the species for the genus (such as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (such as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (such as boards for stage)
Synecdoche
a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole
