RHETORICAL TERMS #3
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a brief reference to literature, history, the Bible,
mythology, popular culture, and so on that readers
are expected to recognize
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a person, event, or object that stands for something
more than its literal meaning
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an expression in which two words that contradict
each other are joined
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deliberate exaggeration for emphasis or humorous
effect
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the use of figures of speech to create vivid images
that appeal to one or more of the senses
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describing concepts or objects as if they were
human
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a play on words, often achieved through the use of
words with similar sounds but different meanings
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a comparison of two dissimilar things using the
words like or as
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deliberate de-emphasis for effect
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a form of comparison that explains an unfamiliar
element by comparing it to another that is more
familiar
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a fanciful, particularly clever extended metaphor
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characterized by an excessive display of learning
or scholarship
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imaginative language used to suggest a special
meaning or create a special effect
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a word with the same basic meaning as another
word
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substituting the name of one object for another
object closely associated with it
Metonymy is also the rhetorical strategy of
describing something indirectly by referring to
things around it, such as describing someone's
clothing to characterize the individual.
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comparison that equates two dissimilar things
without using the words like or as
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an overused expression
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a question asked for effect and not meant to be
answered
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language that points to a discrepancy between two
different levels of meaning
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a type of understatement in which an idea is
expressed by negating its opposite
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"Senator Obama's call to 'ask not just what our
government can do for us, but what we can do for
ourselves”
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"I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on
Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save
the Planet Earth."
(Senator Barack Obama, speech at a fund-raiser
for Catholic charities, October 16, 2008)
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"I am to dancing what Roseanne is to singing and
Donald Duck to motivational speeches. I am as
graceful as a refrigerator falling down a flight of
stairs."
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I’m a modern man, digital and smoke-free;
a man for the millennium.
A diversified, multi-cultural, post-modern deconstructionist;
politically, anatomically and ecologically incorrect.
I’ve been uplinked and downloaded,
I’ve been inputted and outsourced.
I know the upside of downsizing,
I know the downside of upgrading.
I’m a high-tech low-life.
a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art,
bi-coastal multi-tasker,
and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond. . . .
(George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, Hyperion, 2004)
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"I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't
count; building arks does."
(Warren Buffett)
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"Harrison Ford is like one of those sports cars that
advertise acceleration from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in three or
four seconds. He can go from slightly broody inaction to
ferocious reaction in approximately the same time span.
And he handles the tight turns and corkscrew twists of a
suspense story without losing his balance or leaving skid
marks on the film. But maybe the best and most
interesting thing about him is that he doesn't look
particularly sleek, quick, or powerful; until something or
somebody causes him to gun his engine, he projects the
seemly aura of the family sedan."
(Richard Schickel, review of Patriot Games in Time
magazine)
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Live and learn.
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What goes around comes around.
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"That's the way with these directors: they're always
biting the hand that lays the golden egg."
(Samuel Goldwyn)
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Stay the course.
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"[I]t should be said that nothing objectionable
appears in Heartbreak before page 10. But then:
'Here she is at her kitchen table, fingering a jigsaw
of thalidomide ginger, thinking about the arthritis in
her hands.”
[John] Donne's "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." He is
comparing two lovers' souls:
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If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
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"Now Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know,
I’m green behind the ears, and I’m just spouting off and
he’s somber and responsible. Senator McCain--this is a
guy who sang 'bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,' who called for
the annihilation of North Korea. That I don’t think is an
example of speaking softly. This is the person who after
we hadn’t even finished Afghanistan where he said-'next up, Baghdad.' So I agree that we have to speak
responsibly.”
(Senator Barack Obama, U.S. Presidential Debate,
October 7, 2008)
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"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly,
hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may
think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's,
but that's just peanuts to space."
(Douglass Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy)
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"'He’s gone off his rocker!' shouted one of the fathers, aghast, and the other
parents joined in the chorus of frightened shouting.
'He’s crazy!' they shouted.
'He’s balmy!'
'He’s nutty!'
'He’s screwy!'
'He’s batty!'
'He’s dippy!'
'He’s dotty!'
'He’s daffy!'
'He’s goofy!'
'He’s beany!'
'He’s buggy!'
'He’s wacky!'
'He’s loony!'
'No, he is not!' said Grandpa Joe."
(Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
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"I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to
do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could
have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far."
(Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi")
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"My toaster has never once worked properly in four
years. I follow the instructions and push two slices of
bread down in the slots, and seconds later they rifle
upwards. Once they broke the nose of a woman I
loved dearly."
(Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates." The
New York Times, Aug. 10, 1979)
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"At the next table a woman stuck her nose in a
novel; a college kid pecked at a laptop.
Overlaying all this, a soundtrack: choo-k-choo-kchoo-k-choo-k-choo-k--the metronomic rhythm of an
Amtrak train rolling down the line to California, a
sound that called to mind an old camera reel
moving frames of images along a linear track,
telling a story."
(Andy Isaacson, "Riding the Rails," The New York
Times, March 8, 2009)
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"In our kitchen, he would bolt his orange juice (squeezed
on one of those ribbed glass sombreros and then
poured off through a strainer) and grab a bite of toast
(the toaster a simple tin box, a kind of little hut with slit
and slanted sides, that rested over a gas burner and
browned one side of the bread, in stripes, at a time),
and then he would dash, so hurriedly that his necktie
flew back over his shoulder, down through our yard,
past the grapevines hung with buzzing Japanese-beetle
traps, to the yellow brick building, with its tall
smokestack and wide playing fields, where he taught."
(John Updike, "My Father on the Verge of Disgrace," in
Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, 2000)
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He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
Stopping by the woods on a snowey evening
Robert Frost.
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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War
Room."
(Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley in Dr.
Strangelove, 1964)
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Commander William T. Riker: Charming woman!
Lt. Commander Data: [voice-over] The tone of
Commander Riker's voice makes me suspect that he
is not serious about finding Ambassador T'Pel
charming. My experience suggests that in fact he
may mean the exact opposite of what he says.
("Data's Day," Star Trek: The Next Generation,
1991)
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"In There's Something About Mary (1998), [when]
Ted thinks he's been arrested for picking up a
hitchhiker while the audience knows he's being
questioned by police about a murder, otherwise
innocuous lines he delivers, such as 'I've done it
several times before' and 'It's no big deal,'
generate laughter."
(Paul Gulino, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach.
Continuum, 2004)
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"Between the lower east side tenements
the sky is a snotty handkerchief."
(Marge Piercy, "The Butt of Winter")
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"Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There
was no one there."
(proverb quoted by Christopher Moltisanti, The
Sopranos)
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"Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations."
(Faith Baldwin, Face Toward the Spring, 1956)
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The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our
savings.
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"The B.L.T. left without paying."
(waitress referring to a customer)
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"Oh, you think you're so special because you get to
play Picture Pages up there? Well, my five year old
daughter could do that and let me tell you, she's not
the brightest bulb in the tanning bed."
(Allison Janney as Bren in Juno, 2007)
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? "It's just a flesh wound."
(Black Knight, after having both arms cut off, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
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"act naturally," "original copy," "found missing,"
"alone together," "peace force," "even odds,"
"definite possibility," "definite maybe," "terribly
pleased," "civil war," "real phony," "ill health,"
"random order," "turn up missing," "jumbo shrimp,"
"alone together," "loose tights," "small crowd," and
"clearly misunderstood"
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"We are not amused."
(attributed to Queen Victoria)
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"The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner."
(Cynthia Ozick, "Rosa")
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The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and
Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand
And said he'd kill and kill and kill,
And so he will and so he will.
(James Stephens, "The Wind")
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"Because though no beauty by fashion-mag
standards, the ample-bodied Ms. Klause, we
agreed, was a not unclever, not unattractive young
woman, not unpopular with her classmates both
male and female."
(John Barth, "The Bard Award," in The Development:
Nine Stories. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008)
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"Aren't you glad you use Dial?
Don't you wish everybody did?"
(1960s television advertisement for Dial soap)
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"The new EU member states of Poland and Lithuania
have been arguing this week for the summit to be
called off, and criticizing the German preparations.
For historical reasons, the east Europeans are highly
sensitive to any sign of Germany cutting deals with
Russia over their heads."
(The Guardian, May 17, 2007)
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Will you travel by train or by boat?
Will Michael resign?
Are they ready?
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a redneck is a stereotypical member of the white
rural working class in the Southern U.S., originally a
reference to necks sunburned from working in the
fields."
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"Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which
we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we
want to move the stars to pity."
(Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary)
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"Only the champion daisy trees were serene. After
all, they were part of a rain forest already two
thousand years old and scheduled for eternity, so
they ignored the men and continued to rock the
diamondbacks that slept in their arms. It took the
river to persuade them that indeed the world was
altered."
(Toni Morrison, Tar Baby)
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"I am just going outside and may be some time."
(Captain Lawrence Oates, Antarctic explorer,
before walking out into a blizzard to face certain
death, 1912)
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"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would
want to live in an institution?"
(H. L. Mencken)
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"How is it possible to have a civil war?"
(George Carlin)
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"Goethe's final words: 'More light.' Ever since we crawled out of that
primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry: 'More light.' Sunlight.
Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon. Incandescent. Lights that banish the
darkness from our caves, to illuminate our roads, the insides of our
refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's field. Little
tiny flashlight for those books we read under the covers when we're
supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles.
Light is metaphor. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Rage, rage
against the dying of the light. Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling
gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-Lead Thou me on! Arise, shine, for thy light has come. Light is
knowledge. Light is life. Light is light."
(Chris Stevens, Northern Exposure)
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"Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a
time, and sometimes you weep."
(Carl Sandburg)
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"I have to have this operation. It isn't very serious. I
have this tiny little tumor on the brain."
(Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye, by J. D.
Salinger)
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"Pick the rose. It used to symbolise the Virgin Mary and, before her,
Venus, the pricking of its barbs being likened to the wounds of love.
The association still survives in the common meaning of a bunch of
roses ('I love you'). Flowers might be delicate and short-lived but
they have acquired a vast range of unpredictably durable
meanings, a whole bouquet of significances: affection, virtue,
chastity, wantonness, religious steadfastness, transience. The modern
multiplication of floral emblems and trademarks has, however, taken
its toll. When the red rose can stand for the Labour Party, a box of
chocolates and Blackburn Rovers FC, it seems fair to say that its
symbolic potency has been somewhat diluted by over-use."
(Andrew Graham-Dixon, "Say It With Flowers." The Independent,
Sep. 1, 1992)
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Kings worry about a receding heir line.
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"Look deep into our ryes."
(slogan of Wigler's Bakery)
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A vulture boards a plane, carrying two dead
possums. The attendant looks at him and says, "I'm
sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."
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"Hath not a Jew eyes?
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions?
If you prick us, do we not bleed, if you tickle us, do
we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
(Shylock in William Shakespeare's Merchant of
Venice)
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Oreo: Milk’s favorite cookie."
(slogan on a package of Oreo cookies)
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"Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an
automobile which is traveling downhill without lights
at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old
child. The signposts along the way are all marked
'Progress.'"
(Lord Dunsany)