Vocab Definitions and Examples 1.

Epistrophe: A rhetorical term for a repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses "A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight!" Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 2. Antimetabole: a verbal pattern in which the second half of the expression is balanced against the first but with the words in reverse grammatical order "I pretty, and my saying apt? Or I apt, and my saying pretty?"

Love's Labor's Lost 3. Anadiplosis: repetition of the last word of one line or clause to begin the next. Often leads to climax "Talent is an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment." Nietzsche 4. Polyptoton: a rhetorical term for repetition of words derived from the same root but with different endings "The things you own end up owning you." Fight Club 5. Homily: A sermon, or a short, exhortatory work to be read before a group of listeners in order to instruct them spiritually or morally "The Parson's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales 6. Semantics: The study of actual meaning in languages--especially the meanings of individual words and word combinations in phrases and sentences--as opposed to other linguistic aspects like grammar, morphology, etymology, and syntax. Awful used to mean full of awe instead of terrible or frightening 7. Colloquialism: A word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing. Cool, awesome, sucks, swear words 8. Aphorism: A tersely (concise) phrased statement of a truth or opinion. "All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why." James Thurber 9. Syllogism: A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion Major premise: All men are mortal. Minor premise: Socrates is a man. Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

10. Epanalepeis: Repetition at the end of a clause or sentence of the word or phrase with which it began "The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink; the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking." Jack Sparrow, The Pirates of the Caribbean 11. Chiasmus: A literary scheme in which the author introduces words or concepts in a particular order, then later repeats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern. "You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget." Cormac McCarthy, The Road 12. Caricature: Exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics Charles Dickens is know for his caricatures in literature 13. Pedantic: Words, phrases, or general tone that is overly scholarly, academic, or bookish Hermione Granger in Harry Potter 14. Invective: Abusive language; discourse that casts blame on somebody or someone A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, threesuited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear, II.2 15. Litotes: A form of understatement using a negative statement "I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street brotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices." Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub