Being a fellow word person (and if you’re reading this, I assume you are), you probably often wonder about the meanings of various words. Sometimes you probably even wonder about the meanings of “word words,” or what are known as rhetorical devices.
Recently I stumbled across a Merriam-Webster web page called “31 Useful Rhetorical Devices,” referring to the “devices” we use in speech and writing to have an effect on our audience. Among the 31 devices the page lists, there seem to be some striking similarities between some of the terms, so I thought we’d take a look at them this week. (By the way, when I wrote about rhetorical devices a few years ago, I noted there would not be a test at the end of the column, and rest assured that is the case today.)
Let’s start with “antiphrasis,” where a word or phrase is used in a way that’s opposite of its literal meaning for comic or ironic effect, such as moaning, “I just love being stuck in traffic.”
Similar to it is “oxymoron,” which is a contradiction in terms – or as M-W puts it: “A combination of contradictory or incongruous words.” A few oxymorons that come to mind are jumbo shrimp, tight slacks and working vacation.
Next up is “apophasis,” whose definition, as far as I can see, is pretty much the same as “paralipsis.” Apophasis, says Merriam-Webster, is “ the raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it (as in ‘We won’t discuss his past crimes’).”
Paralipsis, meanwhile, is described as when “one pretends to ignore or omit something by actually mentioning it.” Seventy-three-year-old U.S. President Ronald Reagan used paralipsis very effectively during a 1984 presidential debate with Democratic rival Walter Mondale when he quipped, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Then there are “metonymy” and “synecdoche.” Metonymy is using a word in place of another word it’s associated with. Merriam-Webster uses the example of the word “crown” being used when meaning “the lands belonging to the crown.”
“Synecdoche” is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole. For example, “city hall” is often used to mean “local government.”
How about “syllepsis” and “zeugma”? “Syllepsis” pertains to a word that’s used in two ways such that it is taken literally in one case and metaphorically in the other. The Rolling Stones made good use of this device in their song “Honky Tonk Women” when they sang, “She blew my nose and then she blew my mind.”
“Zeugma” refers to a word used to modify two or more words in a way that applies to each differently and may make sense with only one. Consider the key word “stole” in this sentence: “The thief stole the painting and away.”
Finally, the rest of this column is just a lot of noise – or at least a couple words that describe types of sounds. “Onomatopoeia,” as you may recall from your school days, is the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it. Examples of onomatopoeia (which gets its name from the words onoma, meaning “name,” and poiein meaning “to make”) include: roar, hiss, honk and chirp.
And then there’s “cacophony,” which is described as “a harsh or jarring sound.” An example of this, says litcharts.com, is these lines uttered by Lady Macbeth, which are cacophonous “not only through what she says, but through the discordant way she says it: ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say! — One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!’”
I hope you enjoyed this piece and that it was not, as Macbeth lamented, just “a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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