Articulus (ar-tic’-u-lus): Roughly equivalent to “phrase” in English, except that the emphasis is on joining several phrases (or words) successively without any conjunctions (in which case articulus is simply synonymous with the Greek term asyndeton). See also brachylogia.
It had snowed for four days. I had left my snow shovel outside and I couldn’t find it—it was buried somewhere between the garage and the house. The snow was cold, wet, hard to walk through, slippery, murderous.
I waded through three feet of snow the ten feet to my garage. I had one of those hand-held Benzomatic soldering torches out there. While I was sitting inside lamenting the loss of my snow shovel, I had gotten a brilliant idea: I could use the Benzomatic torch to melt a path to my house!
Damn. There were no matches in the garage, but then I saw my wife’s lighter sitting on the little table in front of the mower. I went outside and lit up the torch. It made a beautiful hissing sound pushing the blue flame. I waved it over the snow and it cut a path about 1/4”. At this rate it would take a week and at least ten Benzomatic torch loads of propane to clear a path to the house. I threw the torch out toward the garden, and waded back to the house.
I took off my boots and headed for the liquor cabinet. I was cold and needed a glass of whiskey to warm me up. I stretched out on my couch and drank down the whiskey in three gulps. I started feeling pretty good. I laid back and closed my eyes, thinking about the snow shovel thing. I got an idea! A big idea! A bigger fire!
I could douse the snow with gasoline! I got up and put on my coat, boots, gloves, hat, scarf. I waded through the snow again, I got the gas can by my mower. I went outside, opened the spout and poured gasoline where I thought the path would be. I pulled out my wife’s lighter and set the snow on fire.
Holy shit! The flames were five feet high! I had spilled some gasoline on my pants around the cuffs. They went up in flames. I rolled around in the snow and they went out almost immediately. I felt something sharp under my back. It was my snow shovel! I pulled it out and used it to beat and extinguish the flaming path to my house.
The fire thing was a bad idea, but it got the job done.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 