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  Rhetorical Device Click for more information Definition Click for more information
Go to Record in Question  ABNUENTIA ADDRESS in the form of a refusal to do something or to accept a truth claim that has been made.
Go to Record in Question  ABOMINATIO ADDRESS designed to insult one's addressee.
Insulting form of address, direct insult to the face.
Contrast EXECRATIO, which is not face-to-face.
Greek: bdelygmia
Go to Record in Question  ABRUPTIO Abrupt and unpolished spontaneous RHETORICAL STYLE.
Go to Record in Question  ABUNDANTIA RHETORICAL STYLE which prefers extensive and expansive, sometimes redundant, use of language.
Go to Record in Question  ABUSIO ANOMALIA in the form of improper or extended use of a word in a meaning deviating from its basic meaning.
Also called catachresis in Latin. Greek: katachreesis.
Go to Record in Question  ACCESSUS AD AUCTORES PREFACE
Go to Record in Question  ACCLAMATIO 插入總結感嘆法 METALINGUISTIC COMMENT in the form of a summary emphatic evocation of the overall significance or import of one's narrative or argument.　
Greek: Epiphonema.
Go to Record in Question  ACCUMULATIO REPETITIO of the same basic semantic content in a series of semantically distinct but near-synonymous expressions.
Go to Record in Question  ACCUMULATIO-DISJUNCTIVE 重堆法﹣選擇 ACCUMULATIO in the form of the unmarked juxtaposition of several expressions in a disjunctive mode.
Go to Record in Question  ACCUSATIO ADDRESS designed to declare one's addressee guilty of a crime.
Accusation to the face, typically specifying illegal or immoral acts that are claimed to have been committed by the accused.
Greek: kateegoria.
Go to Record in Question  ACCUSATIO MUTUA 互相指責法 Mutual ACCUSATIO; later: mutual insult.
Also known as ACCUSATIO CONCERTATIVA.
Greek: antikateegoria.
Go to Record in Question  ACROSTICON WORD PLAY in which the first letters of each line combine to make a word suggested by the series of lines.
Text in which the first letters of each line combine to make up an intended expression, also called acrostic.
Go to Record in Question  ACUTEZZA URBANITAS in the form of a pregnant, short and witty often humourous remark.
Go to Record in Question  ACYROLOGIA ANOMIA or VITIUM in the form of a manifestly and deliberately wrong use of a word.
Use of a manifestly wrong word as a deliberate rhetorical device. 　
Contrast MALAPROPISM which focusses on the maladroit demonstration of lack of proper learning and education precisely through the effort to show off such education or learning.
Go to Record in Question  ADDITIO RHETORICAL FIGURE which consists in the addition of something to an existing expression.
Go to Record in Question  ADDRESS SPEECH ACT of explicitly addressing an audience.
Go to Record in Question  ADHORTATIO ADDRESS to an audience in the form of an exhortation or encouragement towards a certain action or a certain kind of recommended behaviour.
Go to Record in Question  ADIANOETA AMBIGUITAS in which there is one obvious meaning and another hidden intended meaning.
An expression that has an obvious superficial meaning and another unsuspected and underlying secret meaning.
Greek: adianoeeton
Go to Record in Question  ADMIRATIO EXCLAMATIO expressing surprise or amazement.
歎稱法，贊稱法 Emphatic reference to something with an attendant expression of the speaker's amazement at it, and the expected astonishment of the audience.
Easy to confuse with EXCLAMATIO which focusses on plain exclamatory expression of the speaker's emotion
Late Greek: thaumasmos.
Go to Record in Question  ADNARRATIO NARRATIO of a subsidiary kind which serves to explain or elaborate a detail in another main story.
Go to Record in Question  ADULATIO 諂媚對話法　ADDRESS designed to function as flattery.
Go to Record in Question  ADULATIO-FLATTERING-ADDRESS 典型諂媚稱謂法　ADULATIO in the form of a standardised or ritualised flattery through flattering terminology of adress.
Go to Record in Question  ADULATIO-FLATTERING-DESCRIPTION 典型諂媚描寫法　ADULATIO in the form of standardised or ritualised flattery through flattering description.
Go to Record in Question  ADULATIO+SELF-DEPRECATION ADULATIO with a strong element of self-deprecation.
典型諂媚﹣自謙法 Self-deprecatory flattery.
Go to Record in Question  ADULATIO+SELF-DEPRECATION-MULITPLE 重疊典型諂媚﹣自謙法 ADULATIO in the form of self-deprecatory flattery, multiple.
Go to Record in Question  ADVERB-RAISING METAPLASMUS in which an adverb is moved from its logical position in the phrase higher up in the syntactic tree, as for example in 常當 "one should always".
Go to Record in Question  ADVOCATIO DEI HISTRIONICS which consists in the speaker taking on the role of arguing for the ultimate truth rather than its opposite which is argued for by the advocatus diaboli.
Go to Record in Question  ADVOCATIO DIABOLI HISTRIONIC device in which the speaker takes on the role of the "advocate of the devil", arguing as best he can for the case that is being dismissed.
魔鬼詭辯法 Advocacy of a proposition which is the opposite of what is generally accepted by everyone, including the speaker.
Go to Record in Question  AEMULATIO IMITATIO of an admired work or author, with the aim of equalling or surpassing the object thus emulated.
Go to Record in Question  AENIGMA HISTRIONIC rhetorical device in which the speaker/writer expresses himself in a deliberately enigmatic way, making it hard to understand his meaning.
Deliberately obscure or esoteric allegory or metaphor.
See NOEMA. This must be carefully distinguished from simple use of recondite language, and the distinction is often hard to make post festum because what may seem recondite to us might often well have been colloquial and current to the ancients, though not well attested in the formal literature.
Greek: ainigma.
Ancient Chinese: Very common.
Go to Record in Question  AEQUIVOCATIO REPETITIO of the same word but in a significantly different meaning in an argument creating the appearance of coherence of thought where there is none.
Go to Record in Question  AETIOLOGIA 後補自釋法 METALINGUISTIC COMMENT in the form of the giving of reasons for a sentence already uttered, usually involves the giving of reasons immediately after a statement.
Go to Record in Question  AFFECTATIO SOLOECISMUS in the form of maladroit pretentious learnedness.
Go to Record in Question  AFFICTIO RATIOCINATIO in which one wrongly attributes to one's opponent a statement which one then goes on to refute.
Go to Record in Question  AFFIRMATIO SPEECH ACT of not only mentioning but affirming a sentence, i.e. making a statement which involves a truth-claim.
Go to Record in Question  AGITATIO ADHORTATIO which openly encourages coordinated common action, often drastic action.
Go to Record in Question  AISCHROLOGIA ANOMIA in the form of use of unacceptable vulgar language.
(The vice of) foul speech and swearing.
This is sometimes also referred to as cacemphaton. The Vergil commentator Servius currently expostulates: Ecce cacemphaton! when he spots what in Latin corresponds to a four-letter word.
This must be distinguished from AMBIGUITAS-OBSCOENA which involved unresolved ambiguity which demonstratively leaves room for an obscene interpretation.
Go to Record in Question  ALEATORISM RHETORICAL TROPE by which one is openly guided by chance in what one says or writes.
Go to Record in Question  ALLEGORIA Extended narrative METAPHORA.
Sustained metaphorical discourse, typically in a narrative context.
Go to Record in Question  ALLITERATION 同聲母法 Successive words beginning with the same sound or sounds: x... x...
Go to Record in Question  ALLITERATION-FLIPFLOP 同聲母同韻尾法 Successive words beginning with the same sound or sounds and ending with the same sound or sounds, but with different main vowels.
Go to Record in Question  ALLUSION Intertextual METALINGUISTIC COMMENT in the form of referrring indirectly to another text.
Allusion, veiled reference to a text presupposed to be known to the intended readership.
This must be distinguished from QUOTATION-UNMARKED which involves not veiled reference but direct unacknowledged citation..
Go to Record in Question  AMBIGUITAS WORD-PLAY which mainly consists in the deliberate artistic and playful display of expressions with several meanings within the given context, often but not always with sustained ambiguity.
雙關法 Sustained ambiguity as a deliberate rhetorical ploy.
Greek: amphibolia.
Go to Record in Question  AMBIGUITAS-OBSCOENA 黃色雙關法 AMBIGUITAS in the form of deliberate unresolved ambiguity which demonstratively leaves room for a reading which is obscene.
Commonly known as "amphibolia obscoena".
Go to Record in Question  ANACOLOUTHON ANOMIA in the form of a syntactically incoherent sentence.
Change of construction in mid-sentence, syntactic incoherence.
Go to Record in Question  ANADIPLOSIS REPETITIO of the last word of a colon/line at the beginning of the nex colon/line.
/...x/x.../. Repetition of the last character in colon one at the beginning of colon two.
Go to Record in Question  ANADIPLOSIS-ANALOGOUS ANADIPLOSIS between not identical but analogous elements.
Contrast ANADIPLOSIS-ANTITHETIC where the analogy is between opposites in a broad sense.
Go to Record in Question  ANADIPLOSIS-ANTITHETIC ANADIPLOSIS between elements that are broadly speaking the opposite of each other.
Go to Record in Question  ANADIPLOSIS-APPROXIMATE ANADIPLOSIS between identical elements, but with intervening elements.
When the intervening elements are standard particles, the cases tend to be registered as plain ANADIPLOSIS.
Go to Record in Question  ANADIPLOSIS-CHIASTIC ANADIPLOSIS with CHIASMUS
 
Displaying records 1 through 50 of the 575 records found
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