Can't tell your anaphora from your exergasia? Think that conduplicatio and ploce are only useful in bed? Blogger spell-checker couldn't help. Mustard Grammar is here to help.
Conduplicatio (con-do-plih-CAT-eeoh): Figure of repetition in which the key word or words in one phrase, clause, or sentence is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of successive sentences.
A ploce is a figure of speech in which a word is separated or repeated by way of emphasis.
Anaphora is a rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
Exergasia is a form of parallelism where one idea is repeated and only the way it is stated is changed.
I tell you this whilst aware that the English language graduates amongst you probably knew it already. I didn't. All four words were in my daily newspaper this week. Worth the £1 I think.
3 comments:
you know, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser...
I'm pretty certain that I use one of these devices quite a lot in liturgies and poems... as a way of setting up a rhythm apart from anything else...
but i wasn't at all sure which one I use by the end..
but thanks, anyway st... you've given me some more long words to puzzle over at lunchtime! :-)
I thought an anaphora was a eucharistic prayer. I remember referring to the anaphora of St Basil once in an essay. In fact, here it is http://bit.ly/7f4RKl
Hello!
Some examples? The first two from the Bard, the third from Dr Martin Luther King...
Conduplicatio: Hamlet refers to his naughty Uncle Claudius: 'O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!' (Hamlet 1.5)
Anaphora: 'Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!' (King John 2.1)
Exergasia:
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy;
now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice;
now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood;
now is the time to make justice a reality for all God’s children. '
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