Accumulatio: heaping up praise or accusation to emphasize points
already made
Aetiologia: giving a cause or reason for some phenomenon or
action
Allegory: extended metaphor
Alliteration: recurrence of an initial consonant sound
Anadiplosis: repetition of the last word of one line or clause
to begin the next
Analogy: reasoning or arguing from parallel cases
Anamnesis: recalling ideas, events, or persons of the past
Anaphora: repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive
clauses
Anticategoria: mutual (or counter-) accusation or recrimination
Anticipatio: pre-empting opponent's possible argument
Antistrophe: repetition of closing word(s) at the end of successive
clauses
Antithesis: conjoining contrasting ideas
Aporia: true or feigned doubt or deliberation about an issue
Aposiopesis: stopping suddenly in midcourse, leaving a statement
unfinished
Apostrophe: breaking off to address some person or personified
being, present or absent
Argumentum ad verecundiam: appealing to reverence for authority,
or to accepted traditional values
Argumentum ex concessis: reasoning from the premises of one's
opponent
Assonance: resemblance of internal vowel sounds in neighboring
words
Asyndeton: omission of conjunctions
Categoria: reproaching a person with wickedness to his face (aka
Accusation)
Chiasmus: ABBA structure
Cohortatio: amplification that moves the hearer's indignation
Commiseratio: evoking pity in the audience
Comprobatio: complimenting one's judges or hearers
Concessio: conceding a point either to hurt an adversary or
to prepare for a more important argument
Congeries: piling up of synonymous words and sentences
Contrarium: one of two opposite statements is used to prove
the other
Copia: abundance; use of several words of similar meaning
Digression: an interpolated anecdote
Dilemma: an argument that offers an opponent unacceptable choices
Dinumeratio: recapitulation or summary
Ellipsis: omission of word(s) easily supplied
Enargia: clear, lucid, vivid description
Epanalepsis: repetition at the end of a clause or sentence of
the word or phrase with which it began
Exemplum: illustrative anecdote
Hendiadys: expression of an idea by two nouns connected by "and" instead of a noun and its qualifier
Incrementum: gradual buildup in linguistic description of the
object to be amplified
Indignatio: arousing the audience's scorn and indignation
Insultatio: derisive, ironical abuse of a person to his face
Irony: implying a meaning opposite to the literal meaning
Isocolon: phrases of equal length and, usually, corresponding
structure
Litotes: assertion by denial of the contrary
Metaphor: changing a word from its literal meaning to one not
properly applicable but analogous to it
Metonymy: substitution of cause for effect, effect for cause,
proper name for one of its qualities, or vice versa
Occultatio: emphasizing something by pointedly seeming to pass
over it
Oxymoron: a condensed paradox
Paradox: a seemingly self-contradictory statement
Parenthesis: a word, phrase, or sentence inserted as an aside
Paronomasia: punning; playing on sound or meaning of words
Periphrasis: circumlocution
Polysyndeton: extra conjunctions
Praeteritio: occultatio
Prosopopoeia: speech in character or impersonation
Protrope: exhorting hearers to action by threats and/or promises
Ratiocinatio: indirect amplification via conjecture; as in amplifying
attendant circumstances (e.g. someone's opponent)
Reductio ad absurdum: to disprove a proposition, one validly
deduces from it a conclusion self-contradictory or contradictory to acknowledged
fact
Sermocinatio: the speaker answers the remarks or questions of
a pretended interlocutor
Simile: explicit comparison
Last updated: 5 October 2002 Send Comments to: Barbara Rodgers, bsaylor@zoo.uvm.edu © 2002 Barbara Saylor Rodgers All Rights Reserved. |