Monthly Archives: March 2022

Paromologia

Posted on March 6, 2022 | Comments Off on Paromologia

Paromologia (par-o-mo-lo’-gi-a): Conceding an argument, either jestingly and contemptuously, or to prove a more important point. A synonym for concessio.

There’s a time to win and a time to lose. There’s also a time to shut the hell up after you win an argument. I admit I was wrong, but your are even more wrong to gloat over a stupid instance of being right, when maybe you are not even right. My watch said 9.59 and yours said 10.00. You had to pick an argument over whose watch was right because you had paid $600.00 for yours on the web and it had just showed up in the mail. My watch is a plastic Timex that has never let me down. Being ‘more or less’ accurate is good enough for me, and if I yield to your anal chronography it won’t make a bit of difference to my timekeeping.

How’s this:

“Atomic Watch: it sounds like a comic book hero’s central prop: Timely Man, with his atomically calibrated watch he is always on time. He is never late. He arrives. He departs. He fights tardiness and earlyness with the vibration of an atom, a spandex suit, and an American Flag.”

Anyway, I noticed your watch doesn’t have a charging port. That means it runs on a battery, which will go dead. I looked on the Atomic Watch website and saw that replacement batteries are $300.00. According to the site, the battery drains every two weeks.

So, I think it’s time for you to return it. I wouldn’t wait a minute. Every second that passes brings you closer to the deadline for returns. You better watch out or you’ll be out $600.00, unless a one-minute difference between my $25.00 Timex and your $600.00 Atomic Watch makes an important difference to you. Time will tell.

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

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Paronomasia

Posted on March 5, 2022 | Comments Off on Paronomasia

Paronomasia (pa-ro-no-ma’-si-a): Using words that sound alike but that differ in meaning (punning).

The hare on my head kept it warm. His big furry legs hung over my ears like earmuffs. His body temperature was a toasty warm 90 degrees. The hares are trained from babies to perch on a head with no chin strap! I had gotten my first hare when I was 14. Prior to that I wore 3 squirmy strap-on hamsters on my head. That is, in my Arctic culture the head-hare is bestowed as a part of a coming-of-age ritual. You train all of your childhood with your hamsters and a special rubber robot hare that your mother keeps under lock and key and takes out on Mondays for you to practice with.

One day I got into a jam with my hare—it was strawberry and it was on my toast. I shouldn’t have been wearing my hare at breakfast! When I bent my head down to get a bite of toast, my hair shifted and my hare lost his balance and fell on my toast. This was a major faux pax. Luckily, we were alone at breakfast. I quickly washed him off and hid him under my bed until he dried. If he was caught, he would be tonight’s dinner: that morning, my hare came within a hair of being baked. It was all my fault, but there was a zero-tolerance policy in my village on falling hares.

Anyway, having your own personal hare riding on your head and keeping your ears warm is a wonderful adaptation of one species to another. I am grateful for my hare. Some day I will give him a name.

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

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Parrhesia

Posted on March 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Parrhesia

Parrhesia (par-rez’-i-a): Either to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. Sometimes considered a vice.

A: I’m sorry but somebody has to tell you this. Your husband has a terrible case of jock itch. I’m afraid he may pass it along to you as a yeast infection. The itching will drive you crazy. I just can’t stay silent.

B: How the hell do you know my husband has jock itch?

A: Oh, sorry. I saw him at the gym scratching his crotch like a dog with fleas. It was disgusting. He was whining. I keep some Lotramin spray in my locker. I told him he could borrow it. He yelled, “Yes!” When I brought it back he grabbed it out of my hand and ran toward the locker room like he had to pee or something. I yelled “FU” at him and he disappeared through the door. I went and stood by the door and I could hear the spraying sound of the can and his weird animal sounds, like was was humping the spray can.

B: Uh oh. I think he caught jock itch from me. I’ve been on this Paleolithic diet where I pretty much stopped bathing.

A: Oh my God, I’m glad it’s you and not me!

B: What?

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

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Pathopoeia

Posted on March 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Pathopoeia

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

I have a field. It has rich soils and rocky soils. It supports an abundance of wildflowers, mice, yellow and black striped Garden Snakes, bees, butterflies, ants and even a box turtle hunting for worms and crickets and other insects. For some reason I named him Lolly. I pick him up every-once-in-awhile. Somebody had carved “2000” on his shell. Cruel, but he had survived and flourished—he was 20 years old, but his survival certainly did not indicate that turtle shell carving is harmless.

The field is verdant and thick with life—plant, animal, insect. Autumn creeps in and then winter drops like a brick. Relentless cold, wind and snow. It’s early March and my back porch bird seed feeder and suet feeder are swamped, but there’s no fighting—just light pushing.

Its getting ‘warmer’ and the snow is melting, revealing bare patches of ground were the tall grass is matted down and buried treasures are revealed—things that blew into the field and have been buried all winter—a birthday balloon, a nondescript cardboard box, a gallon milk jug, a piece of aluminum siding and a small black thing. I get my binoculars and focus in. The small black thing is Lolly, laying on his back, dead. Poor little Lolly. The next morning, I look out the window and he’s gone. I suspect the local fox carried him off to help him get through the last few weeks of winter (along with other things).

Lolly’s disappearance should’ve affected me more. But he was dead and the fox was alive. If you’re going to love nature you have to accept how it balances out. I will miss Lolly in the field this summer, but I will take joy in the fox pups if their mother brings them to visit.

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

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Preclusio

Posted on March 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Preclusio

Perclusio (per-clu’-si-o): A threat against someone, or something.

A: If you don’t give me back my jar of pickles, I will kill you right here on the spot. I have a knife long enough to slice your aorta. I have a Glock I practiced with this morning. I have a piece of wire that will most likely cut off your head. I have a corkscrew that will screw into your ear. I have a hammer that will pound holes in your forehead. I have a straight razor that will slit your little size-15 throat. All my weapons are in my backpack. All I have to do is reach in and pull one out and then putting it to work trimming your mortality.

B: Jeez, your backpack must weigh a ton! It looks like you’ve got a sweatshirt stuffed in it, or maybe your little Teddy Bear. Ha ha. Anyway, what’s so important about these pickles? I can’t believe you would you would threaten to kill me over a stupid jar of pickles, or anything else.

A: These pickles are antique. My Great-Great-Grandmother made them for Union soldiers going off to battle. My ancestral cousin was one of those soldiers. He ended up being assigned to Headquarters and kept the pickles, which he considered a good luck charm. Eventually, the pickles were passed along to me, where I’ve taken care of them for 59 years. As you can see, they mean a lot to me. Please give them back.

B: ‘Please’? How cute. How polite. How full of shit. You’ll get your pickles back off the pavement dickweed. Unless—you want to buy them back. $50.00. Cheap.

A: Ok. My money’s in my backpack. I reached in and pulled out the first thing I got my hands on. I smashed him in the forehead, between the eyes, as hard as I could. The hammer went through his skull and lodged in his forehead. He started to crumple, but I caught the jar of pickles before it hit the pavement. This person was stupid. I told him my backpack was filled weapons, but he didn’t believe me and my ‘get the money’ ruse worked. I admit, I was lucky. It might have been the pickles.

This is the closest the family pickles had ever come to being destroyed. This guy had grabbed the pickle jar out of my hand when I was walking down the street. I vowed not to take the pickles for a walk ever again. I would keep them locked in their shrine on the mantle along with the urns, my model race cars, and the monthly bills.

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

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Periergia

Posted on March 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Periergia

Periergia (pe-ri-er’-gi-a): Overuse of words or figures of speech. As such, it may simply be considered synonymous with macrologia. However, as Puttenham’s term suggests, periergia may differ from simple superfluity in that the language appears over-labored.

I was roaming in the gloaming; softly sliding through the dusk toward dawn’s craven poking, the stars’ bellicose yearning for night’s end, even before moonrise, reminded me of my car—a rusted heap of contracted metal, dented, wrinkled and scratched and riding on rotting tires like over-ripe tomatoes gone from the field too long, ready to smoosh at any minute, like the sky and the stars and every anxiety I managed as my existence’s work in the spinning cycles of curling dread that coldly projected my life and death: when night began, how would it end? When I got behind the wheel, would my decaying tires go flat? Somebody is always asking me more often than less often, or not at all, “Matt, why can’t you just relax for an hour, or even five minutes?” I tell them they are making me nervous and go sit in my car. Then, I try to drive away, but I can’t find the key. I am stranded like a salmon on the shore. I wait for the Grizzly Bear and make sure my gun is loaded.

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

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