Polyptoton (po-lyp-to’-ton): Repeating a word, but in a different form. Using a cognate of a given word in close proximity.
“To carry too much firewood can tear the carrier.” I don’t believe this, but it can surely give the carrier a hernia or a strained back muscle. There are so many erroneous things asserted in the world. This makes assertion the king of fallibility. But maybe this is too harsh, after all, this is an assertion about asserting.
I remember when my grandfather told me that fish could talk. Now I see it as a wild assertion. But back then I believed it because my grandfather said it. I went to the pet store to talk to a fish and maybe even buy one to take home to talk to in my bedroom. I brought a big goldfish for $1.10 and took him home for a conversation. I wanted to ask him what it was like to live with other goldfish in a glass tank, what fish food tasted like, and what it was like to breathe with gills. I also wanted to know about his hobbies and what his favorite color was.
I dumped him in a vase and sprinkled some of the fish food on him that I had bought. He swam abound in circles really fast, rolled over and died. That’s when I saw that I had fed him salt instead of fish food. I had some “camping salt” in my room. It was in a cylindrical cardboard container that looked like the fish food container which was cylindrical and made of cardboard too.
I felt pretty bad. Now, I’d have to save up for another goldfish if I was going to find out if fish could talk—that could take a couple of months. I bumped into grandpa on my way to the bathroom to flush the dead fish. I told him what had happened. He t old me:”Don’t listen to me. I’m demented.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was pretty sure that, based on what he said, being demented made him untrustworthy, but not dishonest.
So, I saved my money and bought another fish. When I got it home, I bombarded it with questions. I got no answers to any of my questions. It just swam around the flower vase like I wasn’t even there. I showed him to grandpa when we I met in the hallway outside his room. I was on my way to flush the fish. He yelled “Give me the goddamn fish!” he reached for it and got ahold of vase and pulled, but I wasn’t about to let let it go. We wrestled over the vase down the hallway to the top of the stairs. Grandpa slipped and tumbled down the stairs. I heard his neck snap when he hit the bottom.
I ran back to my room. I thought I probably killed grandpa. I just stayed in my room. Then, there was a soft knock on my door. It was mom. She was crying and told me about grandpa falling down the stairs and dying. I said I was sorry and how much I loved grandpa. She said “I know.”
I had committed manslaughter at the age of 11. It hardly bothered me at all. Is that a good thing?
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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