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Anthimeria

Posted on July 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

Anthimeria (an-thi-mer’-i-a): Substitution of one part of speech for another (such as a noun used as a verb).

He was a goer—always tapping one foot and looking at the sky. My mother had dropped him on his head three times when he was a baby. The first time it happened she was trying to mix a gin and tonic. She blamed Sylvester for “moving” as if babies weren’t supposed to move. The second time she dropped Sylvester, she was trying to unlock and open the car door, which took two hands. The third time she was holding Sylvester’s hands while she spun around. Although, technically not a drop, she sneezed and let go of Sylvester and he landed in Dad’s prize rose bush. Sylvester was scratched by the bush, but didn’t bleed much.

Sylvester’s “falls” didn’t seem to affect him in any critical ways. Instead of a backpack, he wore a parachute. Instead of a ball cap, he wore a motorcycle helmet. He wore a first aid kit on his belt and kept his cellphone pre-dialed to 911 in case he fell and couldn’t get up. Lately, he’s started growling at things that are red. He had a fit over a radish, foaming at the mouth and scratching himself. Yesterday, he saw some strawberries in the refrigerator and went berserk. He growled and foamed and peed into the refrigerator. That did it,

We were sure his behavior was due to his head injuries. We took him to Dr. Grinder, a noteworthy psychologist specializing in people with mental difficulties. Sylvester was rolling in mental difficulties. After two years, Dr. Grinder determined that everything was my mother’s fault. She showed no remorse until the Doctor told her she should pay reparations for what she had done. She exploded with rage. She pushed Sylvester to the office’s forty-story window. “You wanna hit your head big time?” She yelled at Sylvester. “Yes” he quietly said. My mother shoved him out the window. You could hear him laughing, and then there was a popping sound—it was Sylvester’s parachute deploying! We also heard sirens—Sylvester had hit his pre-dialed 911 and the police were on the way.

My mother was remanded to the “Penal Home for the Criminally Insane.” She is not permitted to carry anything breakable. She has a rubber doll she calls “Sylvester” and throws on the floor repeatedly.

Sylvester is totally cured (of what we’re not sure). He has stopped growling and does not wear his “falling down” equipment any more. In fact, he met a woman who is a professional high-diver. He jokingly says they are making a big splash.

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

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Antimetabole

Posted on June 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

Antimetabole (an’-ti-me-ta’-bo-lee): Repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order.

Time stole my pants. My pants stole time. My pants were abducted by a jaunty clock poking away at the future with his lance-like hands. But then, my pants pocketed the clock and bolted out the door in a blur of blue denim. I lived in a fantasy world that gripped me instead of me gripping it. I am completely unable to function as a normal human being. I live in an animate world where everything seemed to have a soul, although they didn’t talk. They moved, and wiggled, and danced and fought with each other. Just last night I witnessed a fight between an aluminum mixing bowl and a potato masher. The bowl was burdened with a good deal of pink cake icing. But, it slowed down the masher, giving the bowl an edge. The fight was refereed by a carrot who seemed to me to be drunk. Then, I observed a bottle of vanilla extract spilled on the granite countertop—a sure sign of intoxication. The granite countertop looked like it was ready to shake the whole mess onto the floor. Of course, the floor looked angry at the prospect and rippled a little.

At that point, my mother waltzed into the kitchen smoking a “Lucky” and clutching a pint-bottle of gin (half-empty). “Cowsill! What are you up to?” she asked. In case you’re wondering, I was named after “The Cowsills” a one-hit wonder 1960’s rock band modeled after the Partridge Family. I was going to change my name to “Luger” when my mother died. I thought naming myself after a Nazi handgun would scare people and keep the bullies off my back. I had an uncle that everybody called “Slasher.” People left him alone, partially because he was in prison.

Anyway, I didn’t know what more I could say to my mother. I had told her in my head countless times that the world was alive—if the hills could be alive with the sound of music, why couldn’t everything else at least be alive, if not with music? I would hold a cocktail glass up to my mouth and start singing “Edelweiss” into it and she would sing along, half-sobbing. It didn’t help me at all.

I couldn’t tell anybody about the animate world I lived in. If I did, I’d get hauled off to the “Jerry Lewis Center.” This was a place where half my family had unwillingly stayed. Lewis’s farting shoes from “The Nutty Professor” were used therapeutically to great effect. But anyway, I kept my mouth shut. Mom’s midnight forays came close to catching me talking to the wall or a soup spoon. But, I was safe.

Then, one night, the world started talking. A dish towel told me to “Get the fu*k out of the kitchen.” Suddenly, the world fell silent again. I followed the dishtowel’s rude advice and discovered that outside of the kitchen objects are inanimate. I would go into the kitchen late at night solely for entertainment. I thanked the dishtowel, but it was it was too soon. The whole world went animate again. I went mad. I tried to poke out my eyes. My mother bought me my own farting shoes. She believes in Jerry. For my part, I’ve developed a friendship with a bedpan. We use Morse code to communicate. He can rattle out a message quite quickly. I put a dowel under him and he moves up and down like a seesaw. I facilitate his communication, like my mother did with my brother Bard, with a computer keyboard. My brother wrote a book about the benevolence of hamsters titled “Hamster Philanthropy and the Rationale of Seed-Based Economies.” He claimed to have interviewed 5,000 hamsters, but his ruse was quickly found out when he was confronted by a women holding a hamster that squeaked loudly and that Bard confessed he didn’t understand. His book booth was dismantled and all copies of his book were recalled.

Well, it’s time for bed. I just wished Pan “sweet dreams.” “Pan” is short for Bedpan. My nurse places him under my bed in case I need his help during the night.

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

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Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, examples, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Antisagoge

Posted on June 27, 2024 | 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.

I know I’m not the world’s smartest man, but I don’t have the to be to know the difference between ale and lager. It’s a close call, but they’re different. They’re both beer, but it takes less lager to get drunk, if you have the right lager in hand, maybe 20-25% alcohol, you get totally shitfaced after six mugs in 20 minutes, and then stumble home or run into a tree with your pickup.

Think about it, you’ve had five ales and you’re still standing. You live in NYC and you’re in for $50. You can still see straight. Your speech isn’t slurred. You didn’t stagger to the men’s room—even after your third visit. You haven’t gotten in any fights. You haven’t even come close to falling off your bar stool. If you stick with ale, you’re looking at another 30-40 dollars down the hatch to get good and drunk. You suck it up and order another ale. I, on the other hand, have already vomited and almost wet my pants. I’m going to have another lager anyway. I’m looking forward to giving everyone the peace sun as the bouncer leads me out the door. I’m no genius, but I think being “bounced” is a noteworthy accomplishment. The last time it happened to me, I got a standing ovation as I was shown to the door.

So there! Walking home drunk from “Zulu Spear Bar and Grill” is dangerous. One section of the street is called “Mugger’s Run.” After 11.00 pm, you run down it as fast as you can with your pockets turned inside out and your wallet stuffed in your underpants. When they ask where your wallet is you tell them: “The guy up the street got it, Sorry.” They’re too lazy to strip search you, so you’re off the hook. Talking about hooks, you’ve got to deal with hookers too. After you refuse their pleasures, they’ll insist on taking selfies with you with your phone. They will put your hand on a part of their anatomy that is incriminating. They’ll take a picture with their phone too and ask for your number so they can text the picture to you. You’re in a drunken haze so you’ll agree to anything (except their advances). Why are you able to nix a romp is your vivid memory of an unholy STD. You had used a condom made in China and it failed—it caught on fire and you were in hospital for a week, fighting the clap and relatively minor burns. So, I had sworn off sex forever. But anyway, you see the selfie the next day on your phone with a “bill” for the photo, taken by a pro on the street. You pay the $50 and get another bill for $50 later that afternoon. You resign yourself to paying $100 a day to keep the photo in the right hands.

There’s more to the drunken walk home, like being chased by rats, tripping over a dead body, seeing an alligator’s head poking out of a storm sewer, seeing a guy playing a guitar with no strings and mouthing the lyrics silently, and worst, a guy in some kind of uniform with a kettle hanging from a tripod, and a hand bell bleeding from a gunshot wound to his shoulder. Nobody called 911. He shouldn’t have been there. It’s bad enough you see him at the mall at Christmas time.

So, in the future, you take a cab, or a bus home, loaded on lager and lost in space.

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

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Antithesis

Posted on June 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

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

Either or. In out. You know what I’m talking about—all the opposites that send us on decision’s trajectory, and may be accented by all the in-between, which themselves maybe further divided. We live in a world of thought that is fissured and refissured, over and over.

The divisions create conflict, hierarchies, and coerced choosing. I see it every day at my fruit stand. “Oh dear, should I get the strawberries or blueberries?” I say “get both” and some customers do get both. But most go into a quandary and I end up telling them which one to choose. People with lots of money tend to buy one of everything—from apples to zoo fruit, which is a really weird fruit. Two bites and you become a honey bear—only in your head. Zoo Fruit is still legal, but not for long. People who are “on” the fruit can be seen trying to climb telephone poles and rummaging for figs in the grocery store, or surreptitiously eating a mango in the grocery store’s back storage area, making loud slurping sounds and bouncing up and down. If you know what’s going on, it shouldn’t be alarming, but if you’re not familiar with the Mango Dance it can be shocking. The police are routinely summoned and they have to explain what’s going on to the naive observer. This usually works out just fine. Yet, there is a group that want Zoo Fruit banned.

They claim the “Zoosters” make a mess and mate in the back rooms of grocery stores.These assertions are both lies. There has never been a recorded instance of either one. In fact, the opposition group was caught making a sexually explicit movie in a grocery store to pass off as zoosters mating. They were fined $3,000 and prohibited from the back rooms of grocery stores forever.

Still, the legalization of Zoo Fruit is in jeopardy. Mango growers are up in arms over the mango eating zoosters giving their product a bad name. We laugh at that!

Anyway, I have to help this customer make a choice between apples and oranges. She says she teaches logic at Martha Washington College. In her mind apples and oranges are an irreconcilable binary—like spam and pork roll—that can’t be mixed. Buying both would violate logic’s primary axiom and put her life into free fall. I recommended she consider the peaches. She picked an apple up and ran away, stepping in a large puddle, slipping, falling down and dropping the apple. People started laughing and she yelled, “Do you know who I am?” Somebody said “Nobody gives a shit lady, this is New York.” I picked up my apple and threw it at her. It hit her in the head. Then I said, “That’ll be a Buck-fifty Ma’m. Cash only. I’ll throw the orange in for free.”

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

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Apodixis

Posted on June 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

Apodixis (a-po-dix’-is): Proving a statement by referring to common knowledge or general experience.

A. I can tell you’re sad—you’re crying.

B. I’m not crying, I’m whimpering and I’m not crying, my eyes are watering from the cigarette smoke filling your room. I’m going to open a window.

A. Open the window and you’re going out the window. I have a smoke lizard from Columbia. They live on the walls of bars where there’s plenty of smoke in Columbia, they are nourished by nicotine and go crazy without it. They will attack your face and tear off your lips. My smoke lizard’s name is “Don Quixote” and he makes a little squeaking noise when he wants me to light him a cigarette.

B. This is crazy. Do you expect me to believe your bullshit about a smoking lizard? This is the worst first date I ever had—you scare me.

A. Calm down. He’s just a little lizard—only one inch long.

B. I feel something crawling up my leg! Ew—it’s a tiny lizard—ew get it off

A. Don’t swat it! He’ll emit a potentially fatal gas. I’m sorry, but we’re in a world of shit. No! Don’t do it.

POSTSCRIPT

She swatted Don Quixote. They were both dead in seconds. One the EMTs heard a cute little squeaking noise. Don Quixote came running out of a closet and scampered up his pants looking for a cigarette. There were none. He became enraged and ate the EMTs lips. There was a lot of screaming and blood. Then, Don Quixote died.

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

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Apostrophe

Posted on June 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

Apostrophe (a-pos’-tro-phe): Turning one’s speech from one audience to another. Most often, apostrophe occurs when one addresses oneself to an abstraction, to an inanimate object, or to the absent.

“Marty had a little clam. It’s shell was brown as mud. It followed him to school one day and was dissected in biology class. Mrs. Smart pulled out his guts and swung then around, making them go up and down. The clamshell was made into a brooch painted with purple flowers. Marty sold it at the farmers market for”$2.00 and bought 10 comic books for him to read in bed.”

Now, this story is all well and good with the exception of the walking clam. There is no such thing as a walking clam. If there were, they’d sell clam leashes at pet stores. And that’s that. The story is fictional, and certainly, is a vehicle for animal activists—the clam as alive when it is dissected—alive! If clams could only speak and cry out. What would the clam say?

What would you say clam? “Ow that hurts. Stop. You are killing me. Ooh that’s my belly! Yaaaa! Hellp! My foot—it’s ooozing.”

Now you are dead poor clam—diced up for no good reason. Laid out on a blood-stained table for the children to see—to learn it’s ok to hack things up for, in this case, for a lesson in biology. And then, the children are given dead frogs to hack up and revel in removing their organs and learning the organs’ names which should be “perversion” and “madness.” The children go home and attempt to to practice their new found skill on their puppies. They put the puppy in the oven and turn on the gas. Once the gas has done its job, they take the puppy out of the oven, lay it on a cutting board on the counter by the kitchen sink. They find a steak knife and begin their macabre task. When his mother returns home she sees the horrific scene: Buffer’s insides neatly arranged on the cutting board. Timmy walks slowly toward her with the steak knife pointed in her direction. She calls the police on the phone behind her on the wall. By the time the police arrive, it is too late for Timmy’s mother. Timmy had her liver and kidneys neatly arranged on the kitchen floor. He looked at Sgt.. Meally with a twisted grin and asked: “Do I get an A?”

Timmy became known as the “Dissection Devil.” He was convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence in the Iowa State Home for Convicted Criminals. Timmy pleaded insanity, but that was rejected because he had learned what he did in school in his biology class. Now, he strives to catch rats in the prison yard. Since he’s not allowed to have a knife, he tears them apart with his bare hands and arranges their insides neatly on the yard’s dirt surface.

What is the moral of this story? Knowledge is dangerous. If you don’t need it to do your job, stay away from it.

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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Articulus

Posted on June 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

Articulus (ar-tic’-u-lus): Roughly equivalent to “phrase” in English, except that the emphasis is on joining several phrases (or words) successively without any conjunctions (in which case articulus is simply synonymous with the Greek term asyndeton). See also brachylogia.

My dreams were broken, shattered, destroyed, obliterated. All I had hoped for was driving away in a Subaru Outback packed with remnants of our ended love. My electric toothbrush, cowboy boots, fencing foil, wagging tail cat clock were rolling down the driveway to her new happy home. It was Herb’s car, Herb behind wheel. Herb who had assaulted our love. Herby that I had vowed to kill.

I was the model husband. I did what model husbands are supposed to do: sit in my recliner and complain and yell orders. My recliner was my throne and I was King. One of her primary duties was to clean the bathroom. If she missed anything, I made her stand on one foot in the toilet for 15 minutes. she never learned her lesson and I actually enjoyed seeing her stand in the toilet—she was like a beautiful flamingo. Vacuuming and dusting were straightforward, so that left things in good order, unless she missed a spot—a smear of dust. When this happened, I rubbed her nose in it until she sneezed and blew the dust away.

Laundry was no big deal, but cooking was. I picked a recipe every night from her cookbook “What to Feed an Ogre.” It was mostly roadkill. She had to forage for it every day: if I wanted raccoon, she had to drive around until she found one, skinned it, and cooked it according to the cookbook’s recipe. Any deviation from the recipe earned her a threat to have her hand liquified in our blender.

So, as a typical loving husband, I couldn’t fathom why she would ever run off with Herb—a nondescript average man. Or, so I thought. Somehow he had seduced my wife—he probably promised state of the art kitchen appliances, or vacuum cleaner. Maybe he bought her new packs of cleaning rags, or window cleaner. Her faithless abandonment of me has shocked me and made me despondent. Now, I’m going on the hunt for a new woman.

Most men would hit the web or hang out at a bar, but I have plan. There’s a rehab center—“Back to Normal”—right down the street from me. I think I can find a normal woman there to get attached to me. My idea is to wave a spatula at women coming out of the facility. If they seem attracted to it, I will strike, saying nice things and asking them to move in with me. I’ve had no luck yet. Maybe I should wave around a different cooking utensil. Like tongs— their grabbing motion says “Come here baby.”

In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out how to murder Herb without getting caught. I’ve decided to hit him on the back of his head with a baseball and then, pour Clorox down his throat with a funnel. I saw that on an episode of “Columbo.” The guy got caught who did it to his wife because he had a receipt for the Clorox. I won’t be that stupid—I will steal it!

I got caught stealing the Clorox and have to go to court next week. It changed my mind about everything. I have decided to kidnap my wife and keep her as a prisoner until Herb comes looking for her and falls down the basement stairs and is killed. Ha! Ha! Maybe we will eat Herb. Ha! Ha!

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

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Bdelygmia

Posted on May 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Bdelygmia (del-ig’-mi-a): Expressing hatred and abhorrence of a person, word, or deed.

I hate myself and everybody like me. I can’t help myself. I can’t resist. No matter how many times I risk bent caught, I go back. If am a certified nutcase. I beg my brain to stop me, but it won’t. It has a mind of its own.

What’s my problem? I like to squeeze women’s butt cheeks in public places—malls, nightclubs, places of worship, schools, etc.

My Uncle Ernie got me started grabbing. One day we were walking through the mall. He went up close behind a woman and grabbed her but with two hands. He had this wild look on his face—his eyes were bulging and he had a smile on his face like he was intoxicated. As soon as he made his grab, he stopped and turned around and pretended he was checking his cellphone. The woman would look around and sometimes ask him if he saw anybody come up behind her. Uncle Ernie would answer “No” and ask if he could be of assistance.

I thought grabbing was so cool that I took it up—I became addicted. I grabbed hundreds of butts and never got caught. Then, everything changed.

I came up behind an elderly woman one day and grabbed her butt. Before I could make my getaway, she looked over her shoulder and said “That was nice.” Here face turned from that of a 60-year old woman to that of a 25-26-year old woman. Then, it immediately turned back to a 60-year old face. She invited me to come to her home once a week and give her grab. All I had to do in return was mow her lawn and water her garden. I agreed with her proposal. We built a “mall walk” in her basement. She would walk past me and I would follow, squeeze her butt and then do my turn-around evasion routine. I spent some of the best days of my life in that basement making grabs.

Then one day she invited me over midweek for a special grab. The basement was lit by candles and the air was perfumed by jasmine incense. She came walking by and her pants were pulled down, exposing her naked butt. This was the holy grail—she put on her young face and said “Grab it hard.” I did. But my hands sank into her butt as if it was peanut butter. I could feel something chewing lightly on my fingertips. No matter what I did, I couldn’t pull out my hands. She was eating me with her butt. It wouldn’t be long and I’d be dead. Just then, the basement door crashed open. It was Bill Whilk, my dad’s Vietnam War buddy.

He said, “Mary Lee, stop right now. You’re about to eat Willis Yodel’s son Wendell!” I felt the grip loosen. Mary Lee kept on her young face. Even though she had tried to eat me, I was smitten.

I learned she was one of very few mutants who had grown up in close proximity to the oil refineries in Linden, NJ. It had never been documented so nobody knows how many hand-eating grabbers exist. None have ever been captured and most people think they are fictional.

So, that does not keep me from hating myself. I would much prefer living a normal life. I hate the fact that I married Mary Lee. I’ve become her grabber pimp. I can’t rat her out. I’d be ratting myself out. End of story.

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

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Cacozelia

Posted on May 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

Cacozelia (ka-ko-zeel’-i-a): 1. A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned. 2. Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.

He is a pickled booger —relish for his secretion sandwich. Look at the mucus dripping from his lips. Of course, this isn’t literally true, it is the beginning of an allegory of the person he really is. Dog vomit. Cow flops. Puss. Blood. Gangrene. Amputated fingers. Ingrown toenail. Gout. Sweat. Rainbows.

Yes, rainbows. The light of hope beaming down on Noah’s yacht, ready to capsize with the weight of his living cargo—endangered species destined laboratories and museums up and down the east coast of North America. This is why I call him a pickled booger, and all the other disparagful cognomens. I don’t how or why he merits he rainbow. Perhaps God has made a mistake. Can it be? Who am I to say—a Papa John’s Pizza franchise owner. I must confess, the idea of pickled boogers intrigues. As a garnish, they would bring my franchise to the top of the mark. Pickled boogers are not produced everywhere. There is only one place in the world. I won’t reveal it. They are worth their weight in gold among aficionados. For example, Steve Banon consumes $1,000,000 worth per year. He has tiny toothpicks to spear them for “Boogartinis.” He sits by his pool sipping Boogartins and making up lies for his boss.

It just goes to show you that one person’s Boogatini is another person’s vile concoction. Which is it? Both. That’s how taste operates through our feeble understanding of its origin, say, in the tongue, with some tastes being excellent and others being vomit inducing. But one person can love what another person hates—we’ve already established that. So, it’s the person not the taste. Jello can tastes good and it can taste like crap (to somebody). Sweetness is the equivalent of truth to the tongue. it is certainly used as a metaphor for goodness—not quite truth—but sweet enough.

But, getting back to Captain Noah. His yacht “Bedlam” is looking for a place to dock. Given his cargo, his quest for a North American dock is doomed. We hear he is disguising the animal cargo to evade detection. They are being disguised as so many Rin-Tin-Tins. Rin-Tin-Tin was a German Shepard mercenary working for the US Army in the far western US. His major role was to bark vigorously in support of Army maneuvers. So, the animals on Noah’s yacht are being taught to bark—even the only existing Samoan Weasel Constrictor. That, I’d love to see. By the way, Noah is disguising his cargo of pickled boogers as peppercorns.

We live in strange times. “The lie, the disgusting, the ugly” have replaced “The true, the good, and the beautiful” as aspirational horizons of the human adventure. We are nearing the end. Don’t despair. Have a handful of pickled booger and make up some lies.

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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Catachresis

Posted on May 24, 2024 | Leave a comment

Catachresis (kat-a-kree’-sis): The use of a word in a context that differs from its proper application. This figure is generally considered a vice; however, Quintilian defends its use as a way by which one adapts existing terms to applications where a proper term does not exist.

I was parking my thoughts under the overpass. Then, I would abandon them—leaving them behind like a salad with no croutons—just romaine lettuce, cheddar chew, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, with oil and vinegar dressing. The more words I use, the more likely it is that ai’ll say what I mean to say. I am reticent to speak my mind because the world waits to respond and I have to pretend I care. I am not good at that as my wife will tell you. She’s filing for divorce because I didn’t on’t “listen.”

So what if she was yelling for help when she got stuck in the dishwasher. She got out on her own, Anyway, you’d think she was helpless the way she talks. I believe that “No island is a man.” Anybody can see that. So why do we keep trying to make islands into men? Think about it. I think it might make sense to a poet or a king, or a geographer.

Anyway, I’m going to take a walk down by he river. I like to look at the garbage washed up on the bank. I especiallynnnnnń like shopping carts. They are like woven metal sculptures with wheels. How do they end up there? I think it’s my wife. She’s Trang to please me to make up for the divorce.

This how I wrestle with my thoughts. It is as if they don’t exist. I don’t wonder any more. I drink and do unsafe things—like going home.

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

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Charientismus

Posted on May 20, 2024 | Leave a comment

Charientismus (kar-i-en-tia’-mus): Mollifying harsh words by answering them with a smooth and appeasing mock.

Bill: You’re the world’s biggest schmuck.

Me: That’s totally wrong! You’re talking about my brother! He’s the king of the schmuck-a-lucks. He makes me look smart and likeable like Santa’s Claus or the Cat in the Hat.

Shh. Here he comes. What’s that you’ve got there?

Brother: A magnifying glass. I thought we could fry some ants. Sizzling ants makes me happy.

Me: You’re 26 years old and I’m 30. My time for frying ants has passed.

Brother: Then what about this? Ha ha!

Me: That’s a baby bird! You are truly twisted. They never should’ve let you out of Gurney Hill. I told Mom and Dad they were making a mistake. When you head-butted the orderly who was escorting you to the exit, they should’ve known. You’re psycho. These things escalate—first it’s baby birds and eventually it babies.

Brother: Bullshit. I am very normal. That’s what my therapist Dr. Bugles tells me. We build little matchstick dungeons and pretend we’re inside torturing each other. I paddle him and he whips me. Sometimes he makes me sit on nails.

Me: Give me the baby bird. It is an innocent little creature that should live!

Brother: Over my dead body. See this? It’s a .22 auto. I got it at the flea market with no background check. You told me all my life I have a hole in my head. Now, I really will.

Me: My brother shot himself in the head. The .22 didn’t make much of a hole, but it was big enough to kill him. As he lay there bleeding the baby bird got loose and ran down the driveway where it was run over by a FedEx truck delivering my “Candles in the Rain” mantle decoration. When you turned it on the “candles” flashed red, yellow, blue and green. And, it played the song “Candles in the Rain” by Melanie. I thought I had heard it at Woodstock, but I wasn’t sure.

At that point I called 911. My brother had started twitching around on the ground.

Somehow, he had survived a self-inflicted wound to the head. As he convalesced we discover he could speak six languages, knew the entire contents of the dictionary, wrote beautiful poetry and gave excellent advice based on his encyclopedic knowledge. It was a miracle! He became an actuary, got married and had two daughters. People ask him how he got so far in life. He says “I took a shot.”

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

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Diaporesis

Posted on April 29, 2024 | Leave a comment

Diaporesis: Deliberating with oneself as though in doubt over some matter; asking oneself (or rhetorically asking one’s hearers) what is the best or appropriate way to approach something [=aporia].

I can’t find my car in the parking lot. The lot is one square mile and cartoon character coded. I am almost certain that I parked in sector Sylvester Cat. But no, it seems there is no Sylvester Cat sector. The closest is Baby Huey the unbelievably strong goose. I can see Baby Huey about a half mile away, bolted to a pole like Sylvester Cat should be.

The lot is nearly full, so I’m going to have the walk up and down the rows to find my car. “What is going on here?” I ask myself. “Is this some kind of cruel trick?” It seems like the rows and rows of cartoon characters are laughing at me.” My little VW Beetle is lost among the SUV’s and mammoth pickup trucks. I’m a lost cause. I’ll never find my little VW by walking up and down the rows of parked cars.

All of a sudden, I hear “Sufferin succotash.” That’s Sylvester Cat’s signature utterance! I look under the cars and see nothing but oil-stained pavement. I’m tired. I’m thirsty. I should go home and then come back around midnight when the lot has emptied out. I think that’s a good idea, so I call Uber. I hear “Sufferin succotash” again. I think some kind of delirium is settling in. I see a white patch of fur sticking out from under a black Lincoln Navigator. I run to the Lincoln and there’s nothing there. I start crying and rolling around on the ground. I yell “Sufferin succotash!” And my Uber pulls up. I notice the Sylvester Cat sign is sitting on the front seat. “What should I do?” And, oh no! I have to share my ride with a little man holding a shotgun. He says “Damn wabbit” as I get into the car. I ask the driver where he found the sign. He said, “Up here about a half-mile. We’re headed there now. Pay me $50 and we’ll be right there.” I was prepared t pay $500 to get my car back! I paid the $50 and the driver handed me the sign and the Uber sped off. Suddenly, I was swarmed by mall security guards: “Gotcha, sign thief! Right here at the scene of the crime!” They didn’t even let me explain and accused me of extortion. They summoned the police. I was arrested and denied bail because I posed a flight risk. How the hell was I supposed to go anywhere? I had not found my car yet. Will I ever find my car? Sufferin succotash!

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

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Dicaeologia

Posted on April 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

Dicaeologia (di-kay-o-lo’-gi-a): Admitting what’s charged against one, but excusing it by necessity.

The corrals are smaller. Where have all the lone prairies gone? I won’t be buried there, that’s for sure. Carbon monoxide fills the air, slowing down my thinking and making my eyes water and my vision blur. I was driving my manure spreader down Main Street. I don’t know how it happened. The bottle of whiskey wrapped in a rag under the seat is used for lubrication. Sometimes I take a yank, but it’s just to clear the dust away. It was a very windy night and my throat was filled with dust. Ah wait! Now I remember! My mother had called me and asked me to spread some manure in her front yard. It was Dad’s birthday the next day, and he always likes a load of fresh manure on his birthday. It’s a tradition that stretches back to the year we sold 90% of the ranch to a hockey rink, a parking lot and an airport. We kept the house, the barn and 25 acres—I raise miniature cows on the 25 acres. I sell them to people as pets and for diet sized cuts of meat. They are very popular with 30-something professionals who like little things like iPhones, ear buds, and electric sports cars. I also grow weed and have chickens. I sell bags of dope and eggs by the highway. All perfectly legal.

When I delivered the manure, Dad took off his boots and ran around the yard while me and Mom sang happy birthday. At one point he slipped and fell down and we all laugh together. We went inside and had cake while Dad talked about back in the day when commanded 10,000 acres of prime pasture land. He had to sell it off because his brother Bill, the co-owner had taken out 3 second mortgages on the property that he used to buy condos in Palm Beach, Vegas, and Hawaii. Soon after Dad found out, Uncle Bill disappeared without a trace. The properties were foreclosed on and Dad had to sell the ranch.

But why am I telling you all of this? I don’t know. It’s just stuck in my gut. Almost like a piece of barbed wire. Well, anyway, it was time to head home from Dad’s birthday. I said “bye” to Mom and Dad and hopped on my manure spreader. I backed into the Dormal’s house, tore off the front porch and smashed into their car in the driveway. I totaled it. At first, I thought it was my blurry vision from all the pollutants in the air. But then, I realized somebody had glued a picture of an open plot of land to my rear view mirror. It must’ve been done when we were inside having cake. The picture was very high resolution, so it would be mistaken for the mirror’s actual reflection.

After we discovered the picture, the police cordoned off the area and conducted a thorough search. They found Uncle Bill cowering in the garage. He had a couple of high resolution landscape photos trimmed to fit my ,mirror, a squeeze bottle of Super Glue and a Glock. He kept saying he hated his brother (my dad) and he had come to kill him. It was Mom. It was all about Mom.

Dad had stolen Mom from Bill when they were teenagers. It is amazing how the most blissful emotion can become so riddled with hatred that it can become a motive for murder. I wondered why uncle Bill didn’t want to kill Mom too.

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

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Distinctio

Posted on April 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

Distinctio (dis-tinc’-ti-o): Eliminating ambiguity surrounding a word by explicitly specifying each of its distinct meanings.

“Ouch” can register physical pan. It can also register emotional pain, little known is ts use to register surprise, as when you step on a big fat snake and it coils around your leg, looking at your eyes as it flicks its tongue and tightens its grip. As your leg swells and you start to feel dizzy, you may say “Ouch” even though there’s no pain.

The snake has got you. It was foolish to go hiking alone in tFlorida Everglades. Year after year people dump their exotic pets out their car window, or lave them by the side of the road: from Malaysian Bang Lang snakes (like one you’re wearing on your leg), to Spitting Weevils that can blind you with their beautiful sky-blue saliva.

By the way, I’m an omniscient narrator, so I’m not really here.

So, how do you get the snake off your leg? Just keep yelling “Help!” Eventually, a Park Ranger will show up and free you. Oh, it’s getting dark. Rangers usually go home at dark. What does that mean for you. Yes, nearly certain death. But, when the snake tries to eat you, he’s going to discover you’re too big for him to handle. You will have died from the tourniquet effect of the snake’s strangle hold. But don’t despair! An alligator is sure to drag your expired body off and feed on you somewhere nearby.

Oh! Do you hear that Rager calling for you? You are saved!

The Ranger found the man unconscious, laying on his back, with the snake strangling his leg. He pulled out his Ranger knife and cut the snake in half. he took the two bloody halves of the snake and swung them around his head laughing maniacally. The man regained consciousness and the Ranger started acting normally again.

They trekked out of the swamp to where the man had parked his car and the Ranger had parked his Jeep. The went their separate ways and the man never thanked the Ranger for saving his life. This bothered the Ranger—people always thanked him for helping out, from finding children’s toys, to saving somebody’s life like he had done today. The Ranger vowed, if he saw the man ever again, he’d make him say “Ouch.” Lo and behold! He saw him the next day. He was with his family. They walked along a bit together and came to a giant fire ant mound. The Ranger warned everybody. The man scoffed and ran to the mound and hugged it. He was swarmed by hundreds of fire ants stinging him into oblivion. He was writhing on the ground yelling “You didn’t warn me!” The Ranger looked at the man’s wife and shrugged his shoulders, called 911, and left.

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

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Ecphonesis

Posted on April 20, 2024 | Leave a comment

Ecphonesis (ec-pho-nee’-sis): An emotional exclamation.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing Leonard?“ it was my father. I was doing my homework. “Homework, Dad,” I said. I was hunched over my desk, tapping away on my laptop. Our assignment was to write a job description, and then write a letter of application for the job. My job description was: “Wanted: stupid-ass drunk with no skills or common sense.” I thought my teacher, Miss Trank, would find it humorous and give me an “A”, especially when she read the cover letter: “Dear Potential Boss: I am drunk right now. I have had three gin & tonics for breakfast and will be drinking a half-bottle of MD-40 for lunch. So, I am a drunk. Stupid-ass describes me very accurately. For example, I sent away to Amazon for a hammock. The assembly instructions were complicated and I got tangled up in the webbing part.i was drunk so I didn’t care, but my mother cut me loose and and I fell on the ground and threw up. How’s that for stupid-ass? The only skill I have is taking a shower, and I have trouble with that. Apparently, my father is right: I don’t know my ass from my elbow. I have a picture of them with labels hung up in my shower. But they fall down from time to time, if they land face down, I’m screwed. I yell for my dad and he comes into bathroom and picks up the pictures and holds them up for me. Then, I can resume showering. Other than showering, I have other possible skills—well, maybe eating and getting dressed too. But that’s it. On the no common sense front, I can give you a quick example: I go out in the rain with no raincoat or umbrella. I get soaked and have suffered from hypothermia several times. I almost died once when I went camping in my bathing suit. Also, once I threw an alarm clock so I could see time fly. I can report for duty tomorrow. I will be drunk and ready to go.”

Leonard finished his third gin and tonic and started off for school. He staggered across Maple Street and was clipped by a car. He was knocked down on the pavement, but wasn’t hurt (so he thought). He was actually unconscious and dreaming that he was uninjured. A fifth-grader, Billy Wack, poked the crack in Leonard’s head with a stick. Leonard flopped around like a fish.

A crowd gathered. Mr. Topi, who lived on the street, called an ambulance to come get Leonard. He was still dreaming inside his cracked head—dreaming he was dreaming that his head had cracked open and leaked most of his intelligence, which he didn’t have very much of in the first place. Then, he heard a voice say “How many fingers am I holding up?” Leonard saw 300 fingers and fell off the stretcher, a common problem with the Hill Dale EMT team. They were different heights and had trouble keeping the stretcher level. When Leonard fell off the stretcher a small amount of his brain leaked out of the crack in his head.

Suddenly he was being shaken. Miss Trank was trying to wake him up. He had no idea how he had ended up in class. Miss Trank said: “Leonard, I am giving you a double zero on this assignment and you are being suspended from school for two weeks for educational sedition.” I had no idea what Miss Trank was talking about. The crack in my head was healed. I went back to the cloakroom, dug out my back-up bottle of gin and took three big swigs to hold me until the 3 o’clock bell rang.

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

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Ennoia

Posted on April 14, 2024 | Leave a comment

Ennoia (en-no’-i-a): A kind of purposeful holding back of information that nevertheless hints at what is meant. A kind of circuitous speaking.

“You might be wondering what’s coming next. It may be worth it for you to wait quietly. You never know. Ha! Ha!,” said my father.

At this point, after at least 100 times, I knew it wasn’t worth it to wait. I don’t know why he kept doing it, but at least once a week he would tell me to “wait quietly” and something beneficial would happen. He was no seer. He sat in his recliner in his bathrobe chain-smoking Camels, watching soap operas all day on our little black and white TV. He was “disabled” and he didn’t work. The Union paid him monthly benefits for the permanent injuries he had sustained when his UPS truck had exploded and he was thrown fifty feet and landed in a dumpster filled with broken glass. His UPS inform saved him from being shredded, but he was badly cut, and physically—he lost one of his eyes, injured from being blown up, and he suffers from PTSD, He can’t ride as a passenger in any kind of vehicle, including trains and airplanes.

They caught the person who blew up his truck. The person had a grudge agains UPS. His brother had died when the UPS driver delivering the heart to be transplanted in his brother got lost on the way to the hospital. By the time he got there, the heart was no good any more. So, this guy started a vendetta against UPS, blaming them for his brother’s death. When they caught the guy, he went “Boom!” and clapped hands. The cops were startled, but they cuffed him and took him away. He was tried and convicted as a domestic terrorist. He got life in prison.

Although we pitied Dad, we believed he could do better than “riding” the recliner and smoking Camels in his bathrobe every day. Instead, we decided to get him a motorcycle so he could tour around the hills and dales of central New Jersey where we lived. Despite his PTSD, he could still drive. We went to Marley’s Harleys and picked one out. He took lessons on the bike for a week.

He took off and never came back. We heard that an “old guy” that looked a lot like him was riding with “The Outlaws.” He was called “One Eye Jack.” That fit: dad only had one eye and his first name was “Jack.”

We gave up trying to find him. Then, 4 years later, there was a loud rumbling noise outside. There was a long line of Outlaws lining the street. One motorcycle was pulling a trailer with with a coffin draped in an American flag. Four men hoisted up the coffin and laid it down on our front lawn. One of the men, with tears in his eyes said “He was always sayin’ ‘You might be wondering what’s coming next. It may be worth it for you to wait quietly. You never know. Ha! Ha!’ His optimism was an inspiration.”

We’re not going to tell anybody that Dad’s dead. We’re going to keep collecting his pension check. He’d like that.

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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Epizeuxis

Posted on April 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

Epizeuxis: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for palilogia.

“Yi, yi, yi, I think I love you very much.“ Can you imagine that? A sultry scene with lights turned low and all of a sudden she busts out with “Yi, yi, yi, I think I love you very much.” What would you think? Most likely you would think she stutters. You ask her. She says “No. I, I, I repeat myself for emphasis.”

This was the most amazing twist on the human condition I’d ever encountered. A few years ago, I had dated a woman who burped loudly and forcefully every 20 minutes, like clockwork. When we were at a restaurant, she would stuff a napkin in her mouth to muffle the sound. At the movies, she’d burp into the popcorn tub, but sadly, it would amplify the burp. We gave up on the movies. She started making the burps into sounds like “Bow-wow-wow,” or “broccoli,” or “Burger King.”

We broke up after I got pulled over for speeding. She did her Burger King burp at the police officer and we were arrested. We were in adjacent cells. I could hear her going “bow-wow-wow“ in her cell. I yelled “Shut up!” She made a loud foghorn burp and said, “I don’t love you anymore” and then did a bow-wow-wow and started crying. I still loved her, but I knew I couldn’t cope with the burping.

She went on to become a professional yodeler. She travelled America dressed as a cowgirl, and made the nonsense musical stylings of the yodeling sounds into a compelling pathos-laden charm.

Now, back to my current problem.

I don’t think I can handle the repetition thing. It’s demeaning. It’s like I have dementia and you’ve got to repeat everything so I’ll remember it, She said “I, I, I think that’s very unfair, I, I, I think I do..” Bingo—now I knew where this was coming from. Carmen Miranda: “I Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi (I Like You Very Much).” She wore fruit in her hair and was impetuous in the movies she performed in.

I told my girlfriend if she would wear an Eiffel Tower statue in her hair and do her repetitions in French, I could probably live with it. She told me she didn’t know French, but she could affect a French accent. I told her that was no good. We broke up. I don’t know what she’s doing now.

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

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Paenismus

Posted on February 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

Paenismus (pai-nis’-mus): Expressing joy for blessings obtained or an evil avoided.

The floodwaters were rising. Weird crap was floating past my house—a tree trunk, a hot water heater, a dining room table, a mattress, a rubber boot. Suddenly it looked like the food was subsiding. I felt like Noah—I was filled with glee—the flood had passed me by. As the water went down I noticed a silver globe embedded in the mud that used to be my front lawn. It was wiggling and rolling around like there was something alive inside it. I’d seen toy balls that did that, but they were much smaller. I picked it up and twisted it open. There was a little man inside. He was sopping wet. He said “Goddamnit, I nearly drowned.“ I was so shocked I dropped the two halves of the ball. He looked up at me and said “What the hell are you going to do now? You saved my life, so now I owe you the cliched three wishes. What do want? Remember, they have to be for things and sentient beings, no countries, piles of money, or mountains, etc.” We went inside my house. He had miraculously dried off already. His suit was amazing. It flashed pale green and gray when he moved. He said, “Ok, go for it Mr. Savior.”

I was ready. As the king of loneliness, I knew what I needed, and wanted too. “I want somebody to love me.” There was a screeching sound, like worn out brakes, a puff of fog and another noise I had never heard before before, sort of like a cross between a banjo and a rusty hinge. The fog cleared, and there was a big mutt sitting there with a black and white striped coat, and floppy ears. The little man said the dog’s name was Moobert. “He loves you,” said the little man. I told him I wanted a woman, not a dog. “Why didn’t you say so. The Three Wishes Rulebook clearly states ‘that in the event of a vague wish, the Little Man may choose from among the possible wishes.’ You said somebody, and clearly, Moobert is a somebody.” Moobert sat on my foot and looked me in the eye. I liked Moobert.

“Ok, I’m ready for my next wish. I want ten more wishes.” There was a blinding flash of light, and a deep voice said: “You have broken the cardinal rule of wishing. Wishing for wishes is like chopping off your foot to spite your face—totally stupid and without merit.” The little man waved his hand and the Keeper of Wishes withdrew.

“Boy, you nearly got us killed. Let’s move on to wish number three and hope you get it right. I’m too old for this crap—ask for a car, or a house, or a pay parking lot. I was ready. “I wish for the Organic Food Emporium.” I had been in love with the girl behind the counter for 10 years. Her name was Dali Na-Na. The Little Man said “Looks like you finally hit it. Be prepared.” He tucked himself in his silver ball and took off. The “be prepared” made me nervous.

I walked into the store and Dali Na-Na jumped over the counter. She was licking my face and wagging her butt. It was like she was channeling Moobert. I decided then and there that I would accept her behavior that I knew it was instigated by the Little Man.

That night, the three of us sat in the living room by the fire. I read my newspaper while the two of them sat at my feet. When it came time to go to bed, Moobert stayed downstairs playing the role of watch dog. Dali Na-Na and I went upstairs. I was looking forward to making love to her. When we got into bed she said “I am your best friend, I will be faithful until the end of time. You can always count on me.” These would become our marriage vows. The promises are so much more meaningful than sex—at least that’s what I told myself.

I could hear the Little Man laughing downstairs and playing with Moobert. I don’t know why he did it. I’ll never know why he did it. I’m still not sure what he did.

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

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Paramythia

Posted on February 11, 2024 | Leave a comment

Paramythia (pa-ra-mee’-thi-a): An expression of consolation and encouragement.

He was crawling through broken glass. “Go Zack!” I yelled, encouraging him to keep going and cross the line. Billy yelled: “You’ll be ok. You can make it!” Ed yelled: “You’ll feel great when it’s over and you’re all healed up.” Zack looked at him and said: “That’s easy for you to say, standing there watching like a vulture.” Zack was wearing no pants and his knees were slashed and bleeding, leaving a trail across the floor. Zach collapsed two feet short of the line. He was carried outside to the curb and an ambulance was called to pick him up.

What was going on here? I was new to the neighborhood, so I didn’t have a clue. I asked Ed, “What the hell is up with this?” Ed looked at me like I was really stupid. “We dare,” he said with a solemn look on his face. “We give and take dares. Nobody knows when and why it started. A dare is sent out each week to the group, and if it is taken by somebody, we work out the logistics for documenting whether it was successfully completed. Depending on the ‘severity’of the dare, you achieve a rank in the group from ‘Player’ to ‘God.’ Zack was going for God by crawling naked through broken glass. He failed. He can use his parents’ health insurance to get sewn up and will earn the rank of Angel as a consolation.”

That night I got a dare text message and immediately responded. I got a message back telling me I had successfully taken the dare. It was to go barefoot to school the next day.. The next morning, I took my shoes off on the front porch and headed out to school. The “Dares”were gathered around the front entrance of San Luis Obispo Middle School. I opened the door and the hallway was covered with thumbtacks.

I thought fast—the dare had been to walk to school; not go inside. My technicality was a winner. Every body cheered and I was picked up and carried to my home room. That’s when I decided I did not want to have anything to do with the “Dares.” Instead, I started my own group, “The Little Ponies.” We were modeled after the My Little Pony—we dyed our hair pastel colors and did good deeds. We had four members, but had a resounding impact. For example, we had our principal fired for taking bribes from parents. The four of us were transferred to another school where we busted the chemistry teacher’s ecstasy lab. The four of us were transferred to another school, where we decided to disband. When we returned to San Luis Obispo Middle School, it had become a dystopian educapalypse. Lightbulbs had been smashed and the hallways were like dark caves, lined with smoldering piles of books. Faculty had become fascists and drunks. The student body had become a behavioral sink—it was rat vs. rat for control of the school. The “Ponies” wanted to have nothing to do with it and we transferred to the local private school: “Immaculate Perfection.” It was wonderful. In my senior year, San Luis Obispo Middle School burned to the ground. Some people said it was done on a dare.

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

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Pareuresis

Posted on February 10, 2024 | Leave a comment

Pareuresis (par-yur-ee’-sis): To put forward a convincing excuse. [Shifting the blame.]

It started when I was a kid. I blamed my little brother for every bad thing I did. I was an excuse mill, and he was my grist. The best part was, no matter what it was, I could convince him that he did it. For example, one day I was playing “Track Star” in the living room. It was x-country. I jumped over furniture and swung from the fireplace mantle. My second time around the living room, when I went to grab the mantle, I knocked Grandma’s urn off the mantle and her ashes spilled onto the floor. I immediately turned to my brother, who was watching. I said, “What a mess! Why did you do this? Do you hate Grandma you little creep.” My little brother said: “I hate grandma, that’s why I did it. I should have done it sooner, right, big brother?” Of course, I said “Right! I won’t tell unless I have to.” I told on him and he had to eat his dinner in the basement for one week. He didn’t crack, and was proud of that. He just liked me too much, and I exploited it to cover my ass.

As I’ve gone through life, I’ve sought out people like my brother and use their loyalty as a shield for my misdeeds. I had a small gang specializing in stealing tires from parked cars. I had replaced three of the five, who took the hit for me out of loyalty. In one instance, there was CCTV of me helping one of my gang members remove a tire. When the case went to court, he testified that I was a “Good Samaritan” who offered to help him out. He got 1 year in prison. I walked. After the tire stealing business was exposed, I started a new scam. I was selling stolen shoes at the weekly flea market. The shoes were stolen from fitness centers where they were frequently left on the floor instead of being put in a locker. Our men and women would sweep through the locker rooms, and stuff pairs of shoes into their giant gym bags. Depending on the condition, I paid my crew by the pair. It was interesting how many people wore Blundstones.

One day we were raided after somebody had seen their shoes for sale. I knew this would happen sooner or later. As the crew was being arrested, Sandy pointed at me and said: “Don’t arrest him. He was here looking for his own stolen shoes.” The rest of the crew nodded their heads. The police took my name, address, and phone number and let me go. My crew got 1 year for selling stolen goods.

It all came tumbling down when I reconnected with my little brother. We met at Dad’s funeral & we became “Purse Cutters.” I would engage a woman in conversation and my brother would sneak up behind her and cut her purse’s shoulder strap, grab the purse and run away. I would feign shock and run after the “thief.” We were nailing a half-dozen purses per day. But that couldn’t last forever. One day, I saw the shock of recognition on the women’s face when I was doing my pre-robbery chat. We had robbed her before. She spun around, and slammed by brother in the head with her purse, knocking him unconscious. “Lead bars,” she said smiling at me as she dialed 911 on her phone. I winked at her and took off running after the bad guy, and was grabbed by policemen who had been alerted. We went to court. My brother testified that he had taken the blame for me all his life, but not this time. He testified that I was his accomplice and was equally guilty. But, I had hit the jackpot!

The woman we were robbing testified that I was friends with her and I had alerted her to what was happening behind her back. And that my brother was a jealous fool, who followed me around making trouble. I couldn’t believe my luck. All I had done was wink at her and she became my instant loyal minion. It was incredible and somewhat frightening. What a great front she would be! Not only was she attractive, but she came from a wealthy family. We were married. Thereafter, she took the blame for everything I did wrong and we lived happily ever after.

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

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Paroemia

Posted on February 9, 2024 | Leave a comment

Paroemia (pa-ri’-mi-a): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegm, gnome, maxim, proverb, and sententia.

“When your pants fall down, pretend it didn’t happen.” This saying comes from the book, “Sayings to Say.” I had memorized 600 of its sayings. I am a therapist. I have found the quotations give me an air of wisdom without actually giving advice that can be used. This keeps my malpractice insurance low and my reputation high. I am known as “The Mystic Psychologist” and “Swami Counselami.”

I have a steady flow of clients, all insured, all mentally unstable, all ready for the Swami’s advice. Two day ago a young man, Forenell, came in for counseling who had so many problems, it took him a whole hour to tell me about them. For example, he had been slicing a bagel and accidentally slit his wrist. He called 911 and got it stitched up. Or, he was driving and closed his eyes. He hit a bridge abutment, totaled the car, and walked away with a broken arm and a concussion. Or, he wanted to “clean out” so he drank a bottle of “Your Move.” He had intended to sit on a toilet all day at work. He got really hungry at lunch time and went to the cafeteria, where he felt a flood of poop coming and pulled down his pants so they wouldn’t get soiled. He turned around to look at the clock and exploded and pooped in his boss’s face, who just turned away from his lunch to see what was going on behind him. Forenell reached down to his pants for the half-used roll of toilet paper. When he bent over, a second wave blew out landing on the boss’s burrito. Forenell was frog marched out of the building by two burly members of the company’s wrestling team. Forenell’s pants were still down as he made his way to the parking garage. He was arrested, tried, and convicted of indecent exposure. He was fined $200 and spent one month in jail, where the other inmates kept pulling down his pants.

After he told me his stories, I knew what I had to do. I pulled my copy of “Sayings to Say” down from my bookshelf, looking very solemn. I closed my eyes, opened the book, and stuck my finger on the random page, landing on a saying. I read it out loud to Forenell: “The window will open if you don’t look down.” Forenell was excited when he left my office. He called me later to tell me he had fallen out of his living room window.

Luckily, it was on the first floor. He had fallen around three feet and landed in the vinca growing around his house’s foundation. When he hit the vinca, everything became clear. He was going to California to become a professional bungee jumper. I didn’t bother to tell him there was no such thing. I took his money and took a cab to my favorite bar.

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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Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, examples, figures of speech, rhetoric, schemes, trope

Syllepsis

Posted on January 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

Syllepsis (sil-lep’-sis): When a single word that governs or modifies two or more others must be understood differently with respect to each of those words. A combination of grammatical parallelism and semantic incongruity, often with a witty or comical effect. Not to be confused with zeugma: [a general term describing when one part of speech {most often the main verb, but sometimes a noun} governs two or more other parts of a sentence {often in a series}].

I was spooning my soup, but I really wanted to be spooning Nell. I couldn’t show my romantic inclinations in front of her mother at the dinner table. My presence was an experiment. Her mother wanted to see what kind of person I am and she felt that the dinner table—with the play of manners—was the best place to do so. Nell and I had been dating for one year, and this was my 75th dinner with the Tonbells. We have the same thing every time. Leek soup, bread and butter, meatloaf, potatoes, and carrots with ice water and ginger snaps and hot tea for dessert. The food was pretty good, but enough was enough. Nell said that I should wait for her mother to ask if I wanted to marry her (Nell). I had agreed up until now. The time had come for me to ask for Nell’s hand. When we were having our tea, I asked.

Nell’s mother looked at me as if I had punched her, and that asking for Nell’s hand was a curse from hell. I was shocked when she pulled a handgun out of her dress and pointed it at her head and said, “If you marry my daughter, I will kill myself.” I had recently completed a course in conflict management at the local community college, so I was ready.: “Conflicts are over who has what rights and responsibilities, facts, and motives. Listening is . . . “ She didn’t let me finish. She aimed the pistol at me and said “I’m going to shoot you when we finish our tea.” “What’s so bad about me?” I asked in tears. She said, “You want to marry my idiot daughter, that’s what’s so bad. She has no taste. She would marry an SUV if it was wearing pants. She needs to marry a doctor who can take care of her.” We were almost done with our tea. The end was near.

I told Nell’s mother that I would go to medical school and become a brain surgeon. She put down the gun and said she would reconsider. That night she fell out of her bedroom window and broke her neck and died. I thought “Good riddance.” She was completely insane. Nell’s father had left years earlier, after Nell’s mother had put marbles on the stairs and he had suffered a broken leg and arm and a concussion.

Nell and I got married. We had leek soup once a month in memory of her mother. I’m pretty sure Nell killed her mother, but I’m not going to ask her.

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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Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, examples, figures of speech, rhetoric, schemes, trope

Alleotheta

Posted on December 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Alleotheta (al-le-o-the’-ta): Substitution of one case, gender, mood, number, tense, or person for another. Synonymous with enallage. [Some rhetoricians claim that alleotheta is a] general category that includes antiptosis [(a type of enallage in which one grammatical case is substituted for another)] and all forms of enallage [(the substitution of grammatically different but semantically equivalent constructions)].

Eddy: That bowling ball is you! The little sparkly things remind me of the flakes in your hair. The three holes remind me of your eyes and mouth. I’m just kidding. The ball has style just like you. It’ll do our team proud like my turquoise ball with the yellow stripe—rolling thunder. It scares the hell out of our opponents. They roll gutter balls like that’s what they were born to do. Put that ball you’re thinking of buying into the mix and we’ll be world class. We’ll make it to “The Bowling Show.” We’ll be famous. Our team “All Strikes” will be asked to endorse bowling products for a fee. Shoe powder. Gripper gloves. Ball wash. Hand towel. Stretch pants. Rocket socks. We’ll be rich—all because of your hot-looking new bowling ball.

Bea: You’re a nutcase Eddy. We’ve never won anything. I thought we rolled because we love it. I love landing that ball smoothly on the lane, aiming for a strike, watching it go down the middle, raising my foot in the air and wiping my hand on my thigh, with the other hand pointed up in the air. I’m a bowling statue, a monument to the game. Maybe I could be Bowletta, the mythical bowling goddess.

She saved her village. The village was on a hill with a roadway running down the side. The Huns were holding the village under siege. The village had run out of arrows and the Huns were slowly advancing up the hill. If they reached the top unscathed, the little village would be sacked and everybody would die a bloody death. Bowletta picked up a rock. She held it above her head and loudly petitioned Zeus to do something to save the village. The rock turned into a perfect sphere and began to grow. Bowletta placed it on the ground as it grew and grew. Soon it was as big as the boulders outside of town. Suddenly the boulders started rolling on the road outside of town. The halted behind the giant ball, which made a rumbling sound and headed down the road with all the boulders following. They crushed the Huns—flattening them like pizzas, killing them all and saving the village. Then, the giant ball shrunk and became a rock—a sphere the size of a bowling ball. The mowed-down Huns gave Bowletta an idea. The village could honor Zeus by knocking down Hun effigies with rolling balls at a festival every year.

Bowling was born.

Eddy: Where did you get that story from? It is so implausible. It’s more far-fetched than Puss n’ Boots!

Bea: Shut up Eddy. It does not matter if it’s true—it’s inspirational. I’ve been to the little village where bowling was born. They don’t believe the story either. That’s their loss. I rolled my ball down village’s hill just for the heck of it. It disappeared and I couldn’t find it. That’s why I need a new ball.

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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Posted in alleotheta, Uncategorized

Tagged elocutio, example, examples, figures of speech, rhetoric, schemes

Homoioteleuton

Posted on April 22, 2022 | Comments Off

Homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-te-loot’-on): Similarity of endings of adjacent or parallel words.

Life was so different without my wife. We had been together for 33 years. We had just celebrated our anniversary. I had given her an apron with a picture of Benny Hill on it. She loved Benny Hill, and seemed to love the apron. She had recently begun to smoke. It was no joke: she was smoking a pack of Marlboro 27s every day. Even though I had given her a new apron, she started making frozen dinners in the microwave. She knew I hated them. Like a fool, I wrote it all off, as she was trying new things—frozen dinners and cigarettes. “What next?” I thought as I got ready for bed. In the spot where she usually slept by me, there was a coiled up garden hose. I called to her and she yelled back “Shut up, I’m sleeping in the garage.” The door slammed shut. Now, I was worried. The next morning I went down to the garage to talk to her. There was a note scrawled in pencil on a piece of paper on my lawnmower’s seat: “Trouble is double when there are two. Two minds. Two directions. Two lives. After capitulating for 33 years, I have seen the light. His name is Cramwell Stricter. I have joined the Sunshine Mountain Collective where Cramwell is the treasurer-in-chief. Stay out of my life.” Well, that was the end of my wife.

I sat in my big living room chair to think and decide what to do next. I was elated that she left me. The past 20 years had been like living in a drainage ditch with a ill-tempered rat. I decided to go onto a dating site. I chose “Match Catch,” a site for people over 60. Their tag line is “We’ll find you somebody to spend your Social Security check on.” I was ready for that. I got an immediate response from a woman named “Tik-Tok Terry.” She lived in the next town over and wanted to come to my home that evening. I agreed on 8.00 pm. The doorbell rang right on the dot. I opened the door and nearly passed out. There was a woman in her sixties dressed like a cheerleader. She started cheering: “You are home, you’ve no place to roam. I’m at your door to give you more—to tease you and please you with my Tik-Tok dance, and possibly some romance.” I thought I must be hallucinating. I slammed the door and hid in the basement. I could hear her yelling obscenities on the front porch. It quieted down. I went back upstairs and opened the front door a crack. She was still there! She started with her Tik-Tok dance again. That was it! I opened the front door to push her off the porch, but she lunged at me. She had a knife. She slashed the back of my hand and ran away. I called the police and they showed up about a half-hour later. I looked a wreck and they asked me if I wanted to try counseling to deal with the incident. I nodded my head. The police officer gave me a card with contact information. The counselor’s name was Cramwell Stricter. I started to cry, tore up the card and asked the night “Why does life have to be so hard? I need a drink. I need to think.”

After ten minutes of deep thought, I went online and bought a plane ticket to Belize. I was going to get tattoos and run wild in the jungle. Then my doorbell rang. The obscenities started. A shotgun blast blew a six-inch hole in my door. I ran out the back door, jumped in my car and drove to the airport. My flight left at 6:30 the next morning. I would spend the night in the airport. What could go wrong?

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

Selections from The Daily Trope are available as a book under the title of The Book of Tropes.

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Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, examples, figures of speech, homoioteleuton, rhetoric, schemes, trope

Mesarchia

Posted on April 3, 2022 | Comments Off

Mesarchia (mes-ar’-chi-a): The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning and middle of successive sentences.

I started lifting weights. I started lifting my spirits. I started lifting myself! I made a contraption like a swing on a pulley. I would sit on the swing and pull myself up by the swing’s rope. I called it “Joey’s Pull-a-Muscle.” I got to the point where I would time each pull, trying to break my own record each time. In order to increase the challenge, I decided to put on weight by eating cake and pie and three large double-cheese Domino pizzas per day, with sausage, bacon, meatballs, and smoked shad toppings. After 6 months I went from 220-340 pounds. I bought a 5x spa towel and made Tick Tok videos of myself when I wasn’t lifting or eating. I got 600 likes for my “Seduction” video—in the video I slowly lifted the hem of my spa towel while wagging my finger and shaking my head “No.”

Then I met a girl on Tick Tok. She said she had been watching me and would love to come over to my apartment and pull my rope some afternoon. What she said sounded slightly sexually suggestive, but I was game for anything. So, I invited her over the following day at 1:00 pm. I would try to take a shower in preparation. Unfortunately, I got stuck in the shower. I stood there, wedged in, all night long.

Then, at exactly 1:00 pm there was a knock on my door. I yelled to her to come in. I guided her to the bathroom with my yelling. When she arrived at the bathroom door, I was stunned. She was wearing one of those inflatable a sumo wrestler suits, fully inflated. She pulled me out of the shower. I put on my spa towel and we sat on the couch. By the way: she was quite attractive: black hair, brown eyes, nice ears, straight teeth, small feet. That’s all I could see with the sumo suit covering her up.

“Would you let me pull your rope now?” she asked. Then it hit me—I had seen her face in the newspaper! Her name was Beth Grisley and she was being sought in connection with the brutal stabbing and dismemberment of the professional wrestler Two-Ton Tommy Tompowski! I stood in front of the open window and yelled “Come and get me!” She grabbed a steak knife off the coffee table and came running at me. At the last second I stepped aside. She would’ve flown out the window, but the inflated sumo suit wedged in the window. I called 911 and soon everything was settled.

As the dust settled, I thought to myself, never again will I invite a stranger over to my apartment to pull my rope. Never again will I make Tick Tok videos. As soon as I lose 100 pounds, never again will I get wedged in the shower.

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

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Tagged definitions, elocutio, example, examples, figures of speech, mesarchia, rhetoric, schemes, trope

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