The Daily Trope

Prodiorthosis (pro-di-or-tho’-sis): A statement intended to prepare one’s audience for something shocking or offensive. An extreme example of protherapeia.

I thank you for coming here today.  You all know why you’re here. Nevertheless, I want to remind you, what you’re about hear and see is explicit, vivid, gruesome, and heartbreaking. It will make some of you sick, again. It will make some of you cry, again. It will outrage some of you, again. But, again, and again, and again, this experience will deepen our conviction, and it will strengthen our voices as we ground what we speak in the sights and sounds of this presentation, again, and again, and again, until the pundits and the powerful and the politically anointed come to their senses and support our cause.

Ok? Nobody? All right, here we go.

“While you’re sitting comfortably in suburbia sipping your piña colada by the pool and trying to decide which color BMW to buy your daughter for college, or when you’re roosting up in your rooftop condo counting your blessings as you gloat with your broker, counting the whopping profit you just made, somewhere else . . .”

• Post your own prodiorthosis on the “Comments” page!

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).