Effictio

Effictio (ef-fik’-ti-o): A verbal depiction of someone’s body, often from head to toe.

Note: This figure was used in forensic rhetoric (legal argumentation) for purposes of clearly identifying an alleged criminal. It has often been adapted to poetical uses.

His dyed blond hair is frozen by hairspray into a combination of a rolling wave and a Dairy Queen. His face and tiny hands are covered with bronzing cream making them look like a too-thick cadaver paint job performed by an angry mortician. His eyes are dull blue like spun aluminum moon hubcaps from the sixties. His mouth looks like a banana, peeled, cut sideways, and dyed with Red Dye 40. His teeth look like stunted piano keys superglued to his gums. His neck has a turkey wattle that swings in the wind. In calm weather it looks like labia. His loosely fitting white golf shirt can’t hide his robust boobs with little man-sized nipples pointing the way to the next faux pas. His watermelon belly is suggestive of an early pregnancy. He has an ass the size of North Carolina. It sticks out at right angles to his back. It actually provides a shelf that nobody dares to set anything on except envelopes filled with cash. His penis has been characterized as a “little mushroom” however there is some controversy over whether it looks more like a little toadstool. Having never seen it myself, I can’t say one way or the other, but I think “mushroom” is probably more accurate, given the source. In any event, “little” is the operative term. Legs and feet are what you would expect: legs like flabby gyros ready for the rotating spit; feet a bone spur museum curated by a crooked doctor from New York: try to find the bone spurs.

All-in-all this man’s appearance is a parody of Charles Atlas, the famous 1960s body builder whose image plagues old men with his tanned bodily perfection; old men who never made the mark.

Who is this man who still longs for the Charles Atlas look–who unsuccessfully uses hair and skin dye to approximate his boyhood hope? Who is unable to do anything below his neck to camouflage his failure? He is the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu) Buy a print version of The Daily Trope! The print version is titled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. There is also a Kindle edition available for $5.99.