Conduplicatio (con-du-pli-ca’-ti-o): The repetition of a word or words. A general term for repetition sometimes carrying the more specific meaning of repetition of words in adjacent phrases or clauses. Sometimes used to name either ploce or epizeuxis.
Ho, Ho, Ho! I did it again. It was at my brother-in-law’s funeral. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Ho, Ho, Ho!” That’s how it went, but I could not help it. I had come down with “Santa-Clausis” after sitting on Santa’s lap and telling him what I wanted for Christmas. When I left, Santa’s I said “Ho, Ho, Ho” and my mother thought it was humorous and cute. But then, I saw a bird squished in the street and said “Ho, Ho, Ho.” My mother didn’t think it was cute and admonished me, but I couldn’t help myself—the worse it was the harder I laughed. Like the time an elderly woman fell out of her second-story window and died at my feet with her head cracked open. I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes. I was beat up by the crowd that gathered.
For the past twenty years I’ve been tying to cure myself of “Santa-Clausius.” I’ve come close—once I only giggled when a kitten was run over by a steamroller. I thought I was on the road to recovery. I wasn’t. The next day I saw a man’s taco stand go up in flames with him in it. I laughed a full fifteen minutes. I felt like something had a hold of me, making me laugh.
Finally, I went to see a gypsy. She told me that the only cure is the blood of a Santa. She gave me a syringe. Christmas was only a week away so there were plenty of Santas to “draw” on. She told me to bring the blood back as soon as possible after I drew it.
I went to the Santa shack in the park. Wearing a balaclava, I burst in the door, knocked a kid off his lap and stabbed him in the leg with my needle and filled it to the brim. I gave it to the gypsy and she injected it into me. Immediately, my white beard fell off and I lost 40 pounds. The gypsy pulled a white mouse out of a cage and smashed it with a hammer and killed it. I didn’t laugh. I was cured!
After that, I hammered a mouse every month to make sure I was still cured. No laughter. No Santa-Clausius disease.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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