Monthly Archives: March 2025

Antimetathesis

Posted on March 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

Antimetathesis (an-ti-me-ta’-the-sis): Inversion of the members of an antithesis.

“Over and under, under and over, aim right, and shoot the fleeing Plover.” This was my family’s motto inscribed in Latin on all the walls of our family’s castle. The castle is adjacent to Inverness, Scotland on the River Ness—maybe the shortest river in the world. It empties into Loch Ness.

Long ago, we stopped paying attention to the motto. It’s significance was lost in the mists of time, It was deemed stupid. How could it bear witness to our family’s character or provide wisdom to negotiate life’s travails?

Consequently, my father the Duke of Earl, was going to have the motto removed from all the castle’s walls and replaced with a new motto authored by his friend who wrote Rock music. His most famous song was “Don’t Fear the Leper.” It had religious overtones and I never really liked it, except the line “Baby here’s my hand, don’t fear the leper, bag it up because I’m your man.” It was performed by “Blue Duster Rag,” and sold millions of copies and led to a leprosy outbreak in northern England.

I got the idea that before we erase it away, we should do some research on the motto’s origins and meaning. I found out the motto was probably coined in the 1800s when Plovers were mercilessly blown out of the sky to near extinction. Piles of Plovers would be left in fields and alongside creek beds and roadsides by the bloodthirsty bird killers. Their bounty wasn’t donated to the poor, rather, it became fox food for fattening foxes for the gentry’s hunt, slowing the foxes down for easy killing by the hounds.

I was dumbfounded. How could a reference to such a ghastly wasteful practice become a motto for anything but a family of cowardly sadists? With that thought, things started coming together. Now I understood why there was a rack in the basement. My father promised me he would show me how to work it when I turned 21. When we were talking about it, the maid serving us drinks blushed. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now that I am older, I get it.

Now, I urgently desired to change the motto. The songwriter friend hadn’t come up with anything, so I put my creative abilities to work. I tried “Stretching the Truth” but that was a little too close to revealing the basement rack’s existence, so I chucked it. After a week, I came up with “Pleasure Hurts. Pain Heals.” It resonated with our family’s grisly past, metaphorically, and ignoring the rack in the basement, it did not link to sadomasochistic practices, but rather, to praiseworthy monastic practices like self-flagellation or wearing itchy underpants.

Nobody liked my motto. They said it veered too close to the truth. We went with “What’s In Your Sporran?” sort of stealing from Capital One’s “What’s in your wallet?” As a motto, it’s just as useless as the old one. It’s crass—instead of asking “What is in your soul” or “What’s in your conscience?” it asks about the contents of your purse—a ploy to make bragging about the Earl family’s wealth relevant. Disgusting.

In the wake of the family motto fiasco, I have coined a motto for myself: “No motto is a good motto.”

Definitions 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.

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Antiprosopopoeia

Posted on March 5, 2025 | Leave a comment

Antiprosopopoeia (an-ti-pro-so-po-pe’-i-a): The representation of persons [or other animate beings] as inanimate objects. This inversion of prosopopoeia or personification can simply be the use of a metaphor to depict or describe a person [or other animate being].

We called him “The Rock” because he had broken a window with his nose when we were playing hide and seek. He was hiding in an abandoned greenhouse. He had tripped over an old piece of hose and he hit one of the glass panels face-first. He has a big nose, and it acted as a sort of bumper shattering the glass and enabling his face to go through unscathed, although he sustained a small gash on the bridge of his nose.

After that incident, The Rock had an almost magical aura. He was thought of as invincible. He did dangerous things to maintain his cache. He did the usual: bungee jumping, rock climbing, parachuting, bull riding, knife throwing target. But, above and beyond everything else, was sneaking so-called illegal immigrants into the US from Mexico. He had a Jeep Cherokee. He crossed the border with stealth at San Luis in Arizona. He would put two immigrants under the hood, on either side of the engine. For some reason, Customs officers never looked under the hood. The Rock told me it was because they thought anybody hiding there would be dead from exhaust fumes, and they didn’t want to deal with paperwork. So, although it was dangerous, the risk wasn’t that high. The Rock got bored with smuggling people, and found something else, more in line with his moniker.

He became a Middle School teacher. It took a few years to get the required teaching degree and certification. His danger angle was sustained while he was completing his education by cleaning wild animal cages at the zoo, while the animals were roaming around their cages! People loved to watch him run from the lion and lock himself inside the safety cage inside the cage. He almost changed his mind about being a school teacher, but had too much invested in it to give it up.

His first day of teaching was just as he expected it would be. There was a shooting incident in another wing of the school. He was hit by five flying objects, one of which was a pair of scissors that stuck in his left shoulder. He left them there until the end of class to show his commitment to teaching. As he was sitting there going over the math lesson, somebody lit his desk on fire. He climbed up on his desk singing “Fire!” All the students lit their desks on fire and started dancing along with him. His pants caught on fire and he pulled them off, exposing his black bikini underpants. Everybody screamed and somebody pulled a fire alarm. The firefighters hosed down the classroom, put out the fire, and nobody got hurt.

My friend was fired from teaching and more is or less blackballed from the teaching profession for “removing his pants in class.” After the incident, the administration called him “Dead Meat.” He tried to explain that his pants were on fire, but nobody listened.

My friend is trying find some new dangerous thing to do. He told me he’s thinking about becoming a crossing guard.

Definitions 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.

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Epicrisis

Posted on March 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Epicrisis (e-pi-cri’-sis): When a speaker quotes a certain passage and makes comment upon it.

Related figures: anamenesis–calling to memory past matters. More specifically, citing a past author from memory–and chreia (from the Greek chreiodes, “useful”) . . . “a brief reminiscence referring to some person in a pithy form for the purpose of edification.” It takes the form of an anecdotethat reports either a saying, an edifying action, or both.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” Charles Dickens

This passage from “A Tale of Two Cities” reminds me of the first time I took acid, seeing the inextricable link between opposites, always existing begging for our allegiance to one, but never both at the same time. We live as victims of a dialectically opposed calculus—in the throes of ‘either or’ as Kierkegaard wrote. We are set up by opposition, the foundation of choice. The choice must be made when we are faced with the dictum that something can’t be and not be it’s opposite at the same time under the same circumstances. Being “the best of times and the worst of times” can be at different times and places, under different circumstances, and perhaps, framed such that they appear best and worst simultaneously, but this not possible for consciousness to perceive—in succession, yes, but not at once while simultaneously discriminating between them. In a way, the perception of opposites takes turns, or they may synthesize into a new whole.

I had a golf club that I had inherited from my uncle. It was beautiful— it’s leather wrapped grip, straight tight grained hickory shaft, and a hand forged iron head. In it’s time, it was the best that money could buy. Now, it was eclipsed by every golf club on the market. Still, I used it. I played all nine holes with it. I was torn between my uncle’s legacy and the new model golf clubs that enabled greater accuracy and distance. I had become a laughing stock among my golf playing peers. It was painful, but my uncle’s club wouldn’t let me go. I didn’t know what to do. My heart was breaking. I wanted to play better. I wanted to honor my uncle’s legacy. I was torn. 

Then, somebody stole my golf club. We found out that it was among the first golf clubs ever made, and it was worth at least $1,000,000. They caught the crook—one of my golf playing “friends.” The club was returned. I decided the best way to honor my uncle’s legacy was to sell the club so it would be displayed somewhere for everybody to see—perhaps at the PGA museum. 

I’m not sure how this relates to a “A Tale of Two Cities” opening lines. I was lucky. If not, I would’ve been the main character in “A Tale of Endless Bogies.” If the club had not been stolen and returned, I never would have realized it’s value. Good came of bad. A sequence of opposites we all hope for. 

Definitions 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.

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Antisagoge

Posted on March 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Antisagoge (an-tis-a-go’-gee): 1. Making a concession before making one’s point (=paromologia); 2. Using a hypothetical situation or a precept to illustrate antithetical alternative consequences, typically promises of reward and punishment.

“You’re lost in New Jersey, panic stricken and almost out of gas: You keep turning right because you think you’ll eventually come to Pennsylvania and be saved, or you could plug in your GPS and actually be saved. The choice is yours to make: ride around in circles or actually find your way to Redding, where you live with your wife and two children and your pet rabbits Bugs and Mugs.”

I thought for a few minutes. This choice-making seminar was grueling, mentally demanding, and almost impossible to deal with. We were constantly bombarded with hypothetical situations by the seminar leader Mr. Jules Aloney. His nickname was “Either Or” and he had a fork in the road tattooed on his chest that said “Take It” underneath it. We met on the beach, so he could go shirtless. We wore bathing suits and cheap sunglasses to hide our shame.

The seminar members came from all walks of life. There wasn’t a soldier or sailor, but here was a a tailor who had trouble deciding where to put the next stitch. It took him a year to make a pair of pants. Another member had trouble deciding whether to stop or go. She had a number of near fatal accidents at traffic intersections. Then, there’s the guy who has trouble deciding whether to unzip or pull down his pants when he pees. The procrastination often lead to pants-wetting. There’s more, but making bad decisions is a common thread.

I work for an insurance company. The last three people I insured had their houses burn down before making a premium payment. The company lost close to $2,000,000. My boss thought I wasn’t doing a good job of vetting them with good questions before I decided to make them a policy-holder. But I thought that the kinds of questions I asked were right on target, like “Are you planning on burning your house down?” To save time, that was the only question I asked. I found out that people lied. It’s not my fault that people lie. Anyway, the boss said that the choice-making seminar would make me better at vetting clients by asking them decision-making questions designed to ascertain their level of risk as clients. But he had an ulterior motive.

My boss wanted to fire me. He had sent me to the seminar because he didn’t want to fire me without a solid reason. He was sure the seminar wouldn’t help me, so he could cite it as a good faith effort he made to “turn me around” before letting me go.

So, Mr. Aloney’s New Jersey question was intended as a step in the direction of my “rehabilitation” and developing the hypothetical situation-making skill. Putting people in hypothetical situations gives you a glimpse of their decision-making skills. For example: “If you just got fired from an insurance company, what would you do?” Ha ha, I know what I would do.

But, getting back to the lost in New Jersey scenario, I said I would keep turning right. I don’t care if I ever see my family and pet rabbits ever again. My wife is having an affair with the school crossing guard, my two daughters treat me like an ATM, and the rabbits crap on the floor and chew on the baseboards. I told Mr. Aloney that I would throw my GPS out the car window and drive around in circles until I found a new life.

I was ejected from the seminar. But I was lucky. My boss was going through the same “shit” as me and could empathize with my preference for driving in circles. He promoted me to “Office Monitor.” I make sure that most everybody who’s in the office is facing their computer. My vetting days are over. It was the right decision,

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.

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Antistasis

Posted on March 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

Antistasis (an-ti’-sta-sis): The repetition of a word in a contrary sense. Often, simply synonymous with antanaclasis.

I fell on the floor for the third time. It was time for another drink. I pulled myself up and stumbled to the bar with my shot-glass in my hand, it had my name painted on it and it was kept behind the bar for me, where I left it every night.

I met some really nice people on the barroom floor—a catholic priest, a hardware salesman, a millionaire from another town. We would talk in slurred speech about salvation, screwdrivers, and fine art. The millionaire thought art was the end of human existence, judging by some it, I concluded it was the end of human existence too, but not like he meant it!

I was a discount surgeon working at Costco, so I would add cutting and stitching to the conversation.

My surgical abilities were beginning to fail given my nightly regime of excessive drinking. I had not made any big mistakes yet, but it was just a matter of time. Time was not on my side.

I lived in a tiny apartment with no room—but I would tell myself that at least it was my room. When I woke up in the morning I had to struggle to remember where I was—I felt like a truck ran over my head and had crushed it like a melon. The juice on the floor was urine, and I was due at the operating room at eleven. That was three hours away. I was still drunk, and was grateful for the bar’s liberality, letting me meet with my friends on the floor. But I guess I took too much advantage of it.

I thought about hiring a stand-in, but Costco did not allow that. Luckily the surgery I was performing was extremely minor. A woman had a boil on the back of her neck, My job was to lance it—basically, poke a hole in it with a needle. Aside from the boil squirting in the attending nurse’s eye, everything went well.

I went home, showered and changed my clothes, and was back on the barroom floor by around 9:15, slurring words and conversing with my buddies. The hardware salesman wanted to talk about chicken wire. We all agreed that was a potentially interesting topic. We started talking about ways of unrolling chicken wire and flattening it out.

I got a call from the Costco Medical Center. They told me the woman I had lanced earlier in the day was dead. I told them I figured something like this would happen sooner or later due to my drinking problem.

Evidently, I had shoved the lance in way too far and punctured an artery in her shoulder. She died of internal bleeding, not even knowing she was bleeding.

I was convicted of criminal negligence and sentenced to two years in prison. I ran into my hardware salesman friend the other day. It was great running into my old friend. He’s serving a life sentence for killing his wife with a nail gun.

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.

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Antisthecon

Posted on March 2, 2025 | Leave a comment

Antisthecon (an-tis’-the-con): Substitution of one sound, syllable, or letter for another within a word. A kind of metaplasm: the general term for changes to word spelling.

My new wool coat was too big. I was just a kid and it was adult XL. My arms were six niches too short to let my hands stick out the ends of the sleeves. It was yallow and green with a hooge collar and silver buttons. It came down to my knees.

Getting a new winter coat every year was a family ritual. My family was poor. My father was a dishwasher at the “Grits and Gravy Diner” out on Highway Six. If it wasn’t for the pancake mix he stole, we would never have had breakfast. My mother made hand-tailored sports coats. She would sell two or thee a year, usually around prom time at the local high school. All of them were white. She would throw in a pink carnation at no extra cost. It goes without saying, if we had to live off Ma’s sports coat business, we would’ve starved. But my mother had a rich Aunt April who was her mother’s sister.

She had been a judge in NYC in the ‘40s and ‘50s. She had sent so many criminals up the river that they called her “Judge Mississippi.” She had made tons of money and took it upon herself to buy me, “Poor Little Johnny,” a new winter coat every year. It was fine at first, but as she got older the coat-buying adventure had gotten crazier. I thought this was why I was getting the giant coat.

She tugged on it and buttoned the buttons and made me squat down in it. Two years ago, she started naming the coats after people. Last year, my coat was named Howard, after my great uncle. This year’s coat was named Charles, after my grandfather. Aunt April never approved of him. He drove a bakery delivery truck and had a kennel full of Beagles that he ran at field trials, where the dogs chased around rabbit-scented bags that were dragged through the woods and fields. I went to a couple of field trials and loved it. I would hang out in the club house and eat pumpkin pie. Grandpa ended his working days as a security guard, packing a .38 and stealing silverware. It was the highlight of Thanksgiving for me to dig into dinner with a fork stamped with logo of the place where he worked.

Anyway, I was afraid to ask Aunt April why she named my coat Charles. She was short-tempered and such a question would be considered “guff,” a nineteenth-century word for saying something stupid that could be a prelude to a listener’s ire. She waved her cane at me and yelled “I know what you’re thinking!” I apologized, but I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.

Aunt April had bought me and my cousin Joe sailor suits when we were really little kids. I have a bunch of pictures of us saluting each other in my back yard. That was the only time I wore it. That was ok with me. I couldn’t understand why she had bought me a sailor suit, but I could understand the winter coat. It was to keep me warm, when otherwise, I would’ve worn the same coat until it was rag. Then, I realized that was her plan with the giant coat. She was getting old and was probably concerned that she may be buying her last coat for me. It had to last a few years.

The coat would certainly last to junior high school, and it did, and beyond. It kept me warm for years. Even though Dad had saved his wages, took out a loan, and bought the diner, and we could afford all the winter coats we wanted, I stuck with the last one Aunt April had bought me.

In a weird way, I miss Aunt April. I did some research on her and found out she was one of the first women to be admitted to the American Bar Association.

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.

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Antithesis

Posted on March 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

Antithesis (an-tith’-e-sis): Juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas (often, although not always, in parallel structure).

What you do and what you say are not worth observing or listening to. Your brain is a bellows blowing wind—a hurricane of nonsense, a typhoon of baloney, and you want me to follow your advice. You don’t know the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, in and out. Every time I’ve listened to your advice, things haven’t gone well. I’ll never forget my trip to Baghdad. I landed at the airport and the plane was surrounded by soldiers. The pilot was killed and we were captured. I spent 11 days in an Iraqi prison battling rats and cockroaches. The US arranged a prisoner swap and I escaped in a helicopter that came under heavy small arms fire as we exited the city.

I didn’t see a single artifact. All that you had touted went unseen. The trip was a total disaster and I almost lost my life. in fact, death was my companion the whole time I was there.

And then, there was the guided tour of chicken ranches in the southern US. I was excited at the prospect of meeting thousands of chickens. I was very fond of chickens. Back in Pennsylvania, I have five chickens that I collect eggs from. They follow me around the yard—it’s like leading a feathered parade. I thought meeting thousands of chickens would be a peak experience—like winning the lotto or driving recklessly. I was wrong. Bird flu reared its ugly head and I was forced to spend a month quarantine in Bucksnort, Alabama. I didn’t hear any bucks snorting, but I heard a lot of heavy equipment burying dead chickens—life was short for those bucka-bucka chickens, but all of them were destined for slaughter anyway—Colonel Sanders will have to wait: sittin’ in Kentucky pullin’ his beard. Anyway, when I finally got home my chickens were waiting for me. My nbrother had taken care of them for me. Two were missing. My brother told me he didn’t think I would mind if he ate a couple of them. He said he was drying their wishbones on the kitchen windowsill, and we could pull apart them after dinner.

I flipped out. I tied his hands behind him and led him to Crow Caw Cliff. I was going to push him off and see if he could fly. I decided not to push him and I forgave him after I cut him loose. I told him to get in his car and drive as far as he could and never come back. He whined and complained. I drew my little .22 auto and pressed against his forehead and told him to “Drive!” He drove. I never heard from him again.

Oh, then there was “invest all you have in Roundup.” I did. Two days later it was banned in the US for killing people. That’s when I should’ve killed you.

You are the dark at the end of the tunnel and the light from a burning house fire. Why am I still friends with you? I’ve come to the conclusion that it is an unbreakable curse.

Let’s go get a beer and call it a day. My chickens all died of natural causes—why don’t we fry ‘em up have a chicken feast for dinner?

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.

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