A few months ago I took a look at a few of the many figures of speech we use from time to time, some of which have pretty odd names. If you don’t know many of the names of our figures of speech, join the club.

That being the case, I recently spent some time (OK, too much time) seeing just how many strange-sounding names of figures of speech I could come up with (hey, everybody needs a hobby).

My admittedly random research rewarded me with the names of 44 of those suckers, and I imagine there are at least that many more  I missed. So, with that out of the way, I’ll take a swing at trying to explain what a few of those 50-cent words mean in layman’s terms.

I also noticed that many of these terms appear to be related, at least inasmuch as they seem to be either synonyms or antonyms of one another. (If you notice that some obvious ones are missing, I left them out because most folks are either already familiar with them or I covered them in an earlier column.)

First up is “adynaton,” which is a reference to something that’s impossible, such as the saying “When pigs fly.” Thinking of adynaton makes my mind go quickly to “hyperbole,” which speaks not of something that’s impossible, but rather is a ridiculous overstatement not meant to be taken seriously. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” is a good example of hyperbole.

Then there’s this thing called “asyndeton,” a rhetorical device in which conjunctions have been omitted. You know, like that time Julius Caesar said, “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”) shortly after his victory in the Battle of Zela. “Polysyndeton” is the opposite of asyndeton because it’s the term for slowing down the rhythm of a sentence by using many conjunctions in quick succession as James Joyce did when he wrote, “We lived and laughed and loved and left.”

Next up is the pair “didactic” and “jeremiad.” The first identifies words that present a clear moral, political or educational message, while “jeremiad” is a document or speech in which the author rails against society or warns of its demise. (You know, like when politicians claim that civilization is going to end unless they’re elected.)

A “dysphemism” is a euphemism that is on the slightly negative or dirty side, like saying “ball and chain” for a wife, “greasy spoon” for a restaurant or “salt mines” for your job. More powerful than dysphemism is “invective,” which comes from the Latin word “invectus” (“attack with words”), and obviously describes disparaging language that is used to blame someone. Invective language can take the form of either a noun (calling someone a cheater) or an adjective. (He’s a sorry excuse for a boss.)

An “encomium” is a speech in praise of someone. Numerous references for this cite a three-minute speech in 2017 in which Vice President Mike Pence praised President Donald Trump 15 times. “Pence’s speech was,” according to Independent.co.uk, “fodder for plenty of eye-rolling and jokes online, including from an unlikely source, Dictionary.com: ‘There’s a word for a person who would praise someone every 12 seconds,’ (Dictionary.com’s) Twitter account posted . . . before linking to the dictionary’s entry for ‘sycophant.’”

Taking things a few steps further is “hagiography,” which is from the Greek words “hagio” (saintly) and “graphein” (to write). It’s a biography that idealizes its subject and is usually written about holy people.

Finally, there are the closely related terms “litotes” and “meiosis.” While “meiosis” is simply the use of understatement, ‘litotes” is a deliberate understatement that’s done for effect. Usually said in the form of a double negative to state a positive, good example of “litotes” is saying that doing something is “not impossible.” That said, I hope you found this week’s column to be not too bad.

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.