February 22, 2005

• In a similar vein, a list of rhetorical terms.
• I knew Spoonerism, but Zeugma? Then I read the example, "He took my advice and my wallet" and realized that CW songs are the epitome of Zeugma. Good stuff!
• That's a great link fatodust. Much better use of examples.
• Thanks, Bondurant, I think the two work well together. Yours reminded me of the one I had bookmarked, but yours got added to the same folder.
• logodaedely - Cunning word-play. Sexy.
• Zeugma is my pet literary concept, after I read about it in Neil Gaiman's blog last year. I pronounce it "zoygma" although apparently it's wrong.
• Lovely words, but for me Thurber buried zeugma and litotes and all that stuff with Miss Groby.
• No one beats tmesis. Tmesis is awe-fucking-some.
• Some of these would be good blog names. I bags 'Paralipsis'
• I'm using malapropism.
• Hey! Those lists are missing polyptoton. Probably because it's not very interesting in English. But we learned most of these in my Latin class. Our Latin club shirt that year said "Your mother is a polyptoton" on it. I always get asked about that...
• I like palillogy, palillogy, palillogy is my favourite.
• Somebody wiser please explain the difference between the examples used for the syllepsis and a zeugma: "He took my advice and my wallet" "He lost his coat and his temper" In the examples: I raised my eyebrows and my expectations. He emptied the whiskey bottle and his mind. This site puts the first in the category of grammer and the second in the category of meaning, but I'm still corn-fused. I've gone here before for info.
• BlueHorse, the only somewhat consistent distinction I can find is that zeugma refers generally to a verb governing two phrases, one of which it wouldn't normally (or the meaning is not literal), and syllepsis refers more specifically to a verb mismatched grammatically or meaning-wise with one of the phrases it's attached to. So uh... that doesn't help at all with the examples. Except that in "he emptied the whiskey bottle and his mind" there's much more of a disjunct when you're reading it because of the meaning change than in the other. That all may be summarized as, I don't actually know. I think they're synonyms. I support this theory by the fact that I had to learn zeugma in school, and not syllepsis.
• Tragically, Miss Groby was struck senseless when hit by some tomatoes.
• Thanks Shandrin. Methinks we might want to send out the Languagehat signal for this one. mmmmm, I also have some questions about metanomy--The one pure example I can remember from a linguistics class was the whale-road, from the Anglo-Saxon, meaning the sea. Seems like the examples given in the site were strictly metaphor. Is one a subset of the other?
• BlueHorse, metonomy is a figure of speech wherein one attribute or characteristic of a thing is used to refer to the thing as a whole -- examples: He trod the boards for years [here boards refer to the boards of a theatre's stage, hence the meaning is he was an actor]. He served twenty years before the mast [the mast of a sailing vessel, hence the meaning is he was a sailor], etc. Metaphor is also a figure of speech, but in it one thing is described in terms of another. Examples: the wine-dark sea, the heart is a lonely hunter, the flower of my heart, etc. No metaphor, genrally speaking, no poetry. But ye can have poetry without metonomy.
• Somebody's been reading Patrick O'Brian of late... Out of interest, is "wine-dark sea" truly a metaphor? It seems simply descriptive - out of interest, would you count "mountainous" as a metaphor, as a non-literal adjective? I'd say that mountainous is closer to metaphor than "wine-dark" - I've always taken it that a condition of metaphor is that it cannot be literally applied. Nobody ever describes a mountain as "mountainous", and they'd sound silly if they used it for something already very mountain-like ("the large hill was mountainous"). A wave, a slush-pile, or (if you're Dan Brown) an assassin from Opus Dei can be metaphorically described as "mountainous", because they are not actually very mountain-like. A sea, on the other hand, can in the right conditions (such as near a volcanic island in the Pacific) literally appear to be as dark as wine. Just interested.
• I think "wine-dark sea" is more of an example of an epithet. And "mountainous" an adjective. You can say "mountainous terrain" and very well mean terrain which resembles mountains. Mountains generally don't resemble mountains, they just are.
• Those Anglo-Saxon things are also known as kennings, I believe - whales's road, spear tree (warrior), ring-giver (lord, leader), world candle (sun) and so on.
• I remember Seumas Heaney waxing large on them plegmund. Listened to his reading of his Beowulf again the other day whilst typing something dull. It was kenning central (a Northern Line station I believe).
• If you rearranged "wine-dark sea" to "the sea is dark as wine" it's a simile, so I don't see why it wouldn't be a metaphor. When I was in high school, though, the English curriculum was utter rubbish, so I'm probably oversimplifying.
• "The sea is dark as wine" isn't a simile, its a comparison, surely.
• In Bondurant's link, they seem to suggest that simile must also necessarily be non-literal ("two essentially unlike things are compared") so dng would be right. However, my understanding of simile was that it was broader than metaphor (as suggested in faoudust's link), in that they could be used in a literal sense as well. So "the sea was as dark as wine" would be a simile, but "the wine-dark sea" isn't a metaphor. But yeah, like tracicle, I never formally studied any of this, because the curriculum was... simplified somewhat. So, older, wiser heads. Whatever it is, it's one of the most evocative images I know. (And the Geoff Hunt painting is fantastic).
• Um, "wine-dark" sea comes from The Odyssey, it's an epithet.
• Yes, Wolof's right, Homer originated the phrase, insofar as we know. And yes, the wine-dark sea is an epithet. A simile likens one thing to another, and a giveaway to spotting 'em is the word like -- his hair is like black wire; my love is like a red, red rose; you have a face like a squished tomato; and so forth. To say the sea is like darkness, or The sea is like wine -- would be similies. All similes are metaphoric in nature, but not all metaphors are similes. Epithets are also metaphoric in nature. (Non-metaphoric language is often referred to as literal speech.) Comparisons can be made literally or metaphorically, depending on the chutzpah and verbal dexterity, so to speak, of an individual. To reprise: You're the flower of my heart, Sweet Adeline -- a metaphor. She's breasted like the swan -- a simile.
• Oops! Thanks, Pleggy. Yes that's what I was reaching for, sorry, the word I meant was kennings. Bees, yes, you're right about metonomy. I knew that one, but had a brain spasm. So are kennings a subset of metaphor or does that stretch it too much? (a warrior is a tall tree hung with spears, an ocean is a road for whales, the sun is a candle for the world) Oh, the teribble spelings that occurz late at night or when wee have a we drop! Not only did I mangle metonomy, but my grammer got gnarled.
• Yes, kennings are a kind of metaphor, BlueHorse. O I must down to the swan-road again, the lonely swan-road and the sky... Now, now, Mr Masefield, don't cry, I was only fooling...
• Um, "wine-dark" sea comes from The Odyssey Once again, my lack of classical education comes back to kick me in the ankles. But yes, thanks for confirming my metaphorical suspicions about the phrase. Epithet. Epithet. Epithet. (Palillogy.)
• I thought simile was identified by "like" or "as"? Anyone?
• Yes, at the risk of being tedious, I believe it goes... "they sailed across a sea of dark wine" - metaphor uh - unless this is some fantasy, and it really is wine - the fabled ocean of Wincarnis or whatever "they sailed across a sea like dark wine" - simile. My English teacher said that similes were feeble, and should be ruthlessly converted into metaphors wherever they cropped up.
• Bah. And an anti-banana [aka Elizabethan fig] for your English teacher! Variety is the spice of writing, and rules like that one make folk itch to refute them.
• a sea as dark as merlot
• weak, very weak
• Upon a merlot sea we sailed -- Or rather rowed, though stomachs quailed. Our captain roared, the third mate bailed, Until at last a port we hailed. Cheers, all!
• punny, very punny