Palilogia: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for epizeuxis.
“Dive! Dive! Dive!” I was a boxing coach and I specialized in having my boxers throw matches. “Dive”is a jargon word for “Hit the mat.” It was sort of poetic. I didn’t actually yell it. That would’ve given me away. Instead, I used hand signals, like a diver diving into a swimming pool. I’d put my hands together like I was praying and rock them up and down and silently mouth “dive, dive, dive.” It worked every time.
After throwing matches for 10 years, I decided I wanted to recruit and train a champ. I found this guy fighting off three thugs outside a bar. The thugs had their asses kicked—bloody noses, missing teeth, swollen heads, bruised necks. I thought “This guy is my meal ticket. Together, we’ll make millions!” His name was Peter Varniski. He was at least 6’7” and weighed nearly 300 lbs. He had a very pleasant demeanor and was a bird watcher. He wrote love poems and always had fresh red roses in his apartment. He was a vegetarian and his mother lived with him. She cooked, did the laundry, and kept the place clean. They watched “Monk” reruns together every night, when Peter was home. He had a pet hamster named “Hammy” that had a hamster tube running around the apartment. He and his mother, “Ma” enjoyed watching Hammy run through his tube.
I quickly found out that Peter was not a fighter. I was disappointed until I found out what put him in the fighting mood. The guys he had nearly beaten to death had called his mother a whore. He had exploded with rage. Anything bad said about his mother would send him into an unstoppable rage. I exploited this. Right before he climbed over the ropes I would whisper in his ear “That guy called your mother a whore.” He’d hit the ring swinging and knock out his opponent in 1-3 minutes. I had to hire two minders to get him out of the ring after each fight. If I hadn’t, he would’ve beat his opponent to death on the mat. He’d calm down when he got back home, playing “Candyland” with his mom after taking a shower, and drinking a cup of tea.
I managed Peter for five years. We were undefeated and we made a good buck. I retired and became a Blackjack dealer at “Rolling Moon,” the local gambling casino run by the mafia and managed by Sal Martino. I knew Sal from high school. One day, he told me he needed an enforcer for his loan business. The previous one, he told me had “Walked into a bullet.”
I told him about Peter. “Just say ‘Your mother’s a whore’ to him and he’ll beat the total shit out of somebody.” It was too late when I remembered that you had to claim that somebody else had said “Your mother’s a whore,” and point them out to Peter. Now, Sal was in a coma and Peter was in jail.
I had really screwed up. I learned a big lesson. Don’t say “Your mother’s a whore” to anybody ever. Just leave it alone. Mothers are a sensitive topic.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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