Thursday, April 19, 2007

Whereby I Once Again Confirm My Nerdiness

Figures of speech were the subject of my thoughts for a while yesterday. They're fantastic -- I love naming the rhetorical device that people are using (even if they're not aware that they're using it); I also love their names because almost all of them come from the Greek. I remember finding it incredibly confusing and meaningless to memorize Greek roots during my sophomore year of high school in Mr. Schwarz's English class; now, knowing the Greek that I know now, I love picking apart words to find their Greek roots.

So, without further ado, here are some of my favorite figures of speech:

Metonymy - using the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated.

Synechdoche - using a part to refer to the whole.

Paralipsis/Paraleipsis - pretending to ignore or omit something by actually mentioning it (if you pay attention, you'll be surprised how frequently this is done!).

For a great list of all different figures of speech, check out Wikipedia.

1 comment:

korean_darkness said...

I've never heard the term paralipsis, but I definitely notice this one!!!

One of my favorite figures of speech is litotes (denying the opposite of what it meant). This too is used quite frequently, and OCCASIONALLY, I will point it out to close friends. I don't push it if they don't share my enthusiasm, lest they kill me. :)