Verborum#
Semantic Devices
Hysteron Proteron: An expression in which what should come last is put first.
Metonymy: A name that is derived from the attribute of the thing named.
Paronomasia: A play on words.
Polyptoton: The use of words that phonetically related but semantically distinct.
Synecdoche: An expression where a part of an object is used to represent the whole of the object.
Sonic Devices
Alliteration: TODO
Assonance: TODO
Consonance: TODO
Syntactic Devices
Anacoluthon: A discontinuity of expression within a sentence, a form in which there is logical or grammatical incoherence.
Anadiplosis: When words at the end of one clause are repeated near the beginning of the following clause.
Anaphora: The repetition of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
Anastrophe: An inversion of the grammatical order of words or clauses.
Aposiopesis: An expression left unsatisfied or incomplete.
Apostrophe: An address to person or thing that is not present.
Asyndeton: The deliberate omission of conjunctions.
Chiasmus: The reversal of the grammatical forms from one clause to the next clause .
Epanalepsis: The same words used at the end of a clause are used at the beginning of a preceding clause.
Epistrophe: The repetition of words at the end of successive clauses.
Epizeuxis: TODO
Hypozeuxis: An expression whose every clause has its own independent subject and predicate.
Parataxis: TODO
Symploce: The repetition of both the words at the beginning and end of successive clauses.
Semantic Devices#
Hysteron Proteron#
Moriamur, et in media arma ruamus
Let us die, and rush into the midst of the fight.
—Aeneid, Virgil, 19 BCE
I will kill thee, and love thee after.
—Othello, William Shakespeare
Metonymy#
None yet found.
Parataxis#
From the Greek: παράταξις (παρά-ταξις, “beside-arrangement”)
None yet found.
Paronomasia#
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
And each half lives a hundred different lives;
—Scholar Gipsy, Matthew Arnold
Polyptoton#
πτερωτὸν τῷ πτερῷ πτερωτὸν ῥηθήσεται
(The winged is winged by the wing)
—Categories, 7.15, Aristotle
Synecdoche#
None yet found.
Sonic Devices#
Alliteration#
None yet found.
Assonance#
None yet found.
Consonance#
None yet found.
Syntactic Devices#
Anacoluthon#
with up so floating many bells down
—Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town , e.e. cummings
In the coal fire will not wholly console them.
—Ouija, Sylvia Plath
From there are ghosts in the air
—I Have Longed To Move Away , Dylan Thomas
Anadiplosis#
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
—An Irish Airman Foresees His Death , William Butler Years
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
—The Dong with a Luminous Nose, Edward Lear
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
—The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
Anaphora#
Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood
—All All and All, Dylan Thomas
Why were they proud? Because their marble founts
Gush’d with more pride than do a wretch’s tears?—
Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts
Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?—
Why were they proud? Because red-lin’d accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?—
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,
Why in the name of Glory were they proud?
—Isabella or the Pot of Basil, John Keats
And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow,
And of thy roses amorous of the moon,
And of thy lilies, that do paler grow
—Isabella or the Pot of Basil, John Keats
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
—Isabella or the Pot of Basil, John Keats
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
—Ode to the West Wind, Percy Blysse Shelley
Anastrophe#
The widening circles into nothing gone
—Calidore, A Fragment, John Keats
Observe how system into system runs
—Essay on Man, Alexander Poper
What love Lorenzo for their sister had
—Isabella or the Pot of Basil, John Keats
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run
—To Autumn, John Keats
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace
—Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness, John Donne
Antimetabole#
Antimetabole is included in the category Chiasmus.
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.
—Hyperion, John Keats
Aposiopesis#
Apostrophe#
O Melancholy, linger here awhile!
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh!
—Isabella or the Pot of Basil, John Keats
Asyndeton#
Asyndeton includes the categories Hypozeuxis.
None yet found.
Chiasmus#
Chiasmus includes the category of Antimetabole.
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone
—And Death Shall Have No Dominion, Dylan Thomas
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down
—And Death Shall Have No Dominion, Dylan Thomas
Beauty is truth, truth beauty
—Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats
Epanalepsis#
It was no dream; or say a dream it was
Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass
Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.
—Lamia, John Keats
Epistrophe#
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
—The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot
Epizeuxis#
None yet found.
Hypozeuxis#
Asyndeton is included in the category of Hypozeuxis.
None yet found.
Symploce#
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
—The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
—To Ulalume, Edgar Allen Poe