Affirmatio (af’-fir-ma’-ti-o): A general figure of emphasis that describes when one states something as though it had been in dispute or in answer to a question, though it has not been.
“I would never do anything like that, even for all the money in the world, or all the tea in China, or all the tomatoes in Italy, or all the ice in Iceland, although it’s not worth much.”
Everybody knew this was just another one of his ploys to blabber about his righteousness. There was always a lurking suspicion that he was a miscreant, although nobody had the nerve to actually accuse him.
He was surrounded by so many so-called accidents he had to be an insurance company’s nightmare. His house burned down ($500,000). His wife lost both her hands in a near-fatal lawn mower accident ($125,000). He lost a foot in an unprecedented golfing accident ($100,000). His daughter accidentally lost both her eyes in a boating accident ($1,000,000). He had killed his son by accident with a handgun deemed “unreliable” by a jury ($1,000,000). Most recently. He was run over by a hit and run driver. He hasn’t reached a settlement yet. “Somebody” had removed the stop sign from the intersection where he was crossing and he’s suing the town for $2,000,000 for “negligent signage maintenance.”
I’ve been a private eye for 25 years investigating insurance scams. Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything, but this guy is just too accident prone to be true. The insurance investigators have been lax, and might be getting kickbacks for turning a blind eye—ha ha. Blind eye.
I just got a phone call—a bookshelf loaded with books landed on his head, fracturing his skull. I’ve decided to tail this guy to see if I can get something on him.
After a month, I think I might have something. I saw him doing something with a saddle cinch at the riding club. His back was turned to me so I couldn’t see exactly what it was. Before I could confront him, he saddled up and rode out of the stable and onto the bridal trail through the woods.
Later that day, I got a call telling me he had hit a low-hanging tree limb at full gallop and died instantly when he was decapitated. After that, I didn’t bother to check the saddle cinch. He was gone. But I heard his wife was already calling her lawyer, before his body was even cold. There’s going to be hell to pay by the riding club for the low-hanging limb that knocked his head off.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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