Tag Archives: The Daily Trope

Metonymy

Metonymy (me-ton’-y-my): Reference to something or someone by naming one of its attributes. [This may include effects or any of the four Aristotelian causes {efficient/maker/inventor, material, formal/shape, final/purpose}.]

Don’t iron your ideas so flat that they sound like cicadas humming somewhere in Kansas!

Damn! I don’t even know if they’ve got cicadas in Kansas–but you get my point, right?

Go for TA-DA instead of HMMMMM–more people will listen, and that’s half the battle!

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Definition courtesy of “Sliva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

Ominatio

Ominatio (o-mi-na’-ti-o): A prophecy of evil.

Lo unto you, I prophecy:

A bleak darkness shall enwrap merry Olde England in a stinking miasma of bigoted gasses and shattered dreams, fanned throughout the land by droll talking heads and political buskers.

Many Pounds will be shed on an unwanted diet of economic deprivation as the Exchequer lies abed, gasping for hard currency, all skin and bones, yet unrepentant, as the marketplace turns to fire and our brave Investors hose it with Euros in a vain attempt to quell its catastrophic flames.

BREXIT has, shall, and will spell cold hearths, broken hearts and empty purses. Our children will suffer. Our economy will burn out like a super nova, leaving us to observe only smoke and ruin.

As the Crown shall surely fall, an independent Scotland will ascend to its former glory, as its Auld Alliance is resurrected and it stands proudly alongside France, a dire threat to England once again!

Beware! The worm is turning.

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

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia (on-o-mat-o-pee’-a): Using or inventing a word whose sound imitates that which it names (the union of phonetics and semantics).

YOU: Yes sir, that’s my baby. No sir, I don’t mean maybe. Hubba Hubba Hub cap. That’s my gal. Boo poopie doo.

ME: Dave! Your hubcap collecting has gotten out of control. Nobody wants to see you dancing naked on the front porch with a hubcap duct-taped to your crotch.

Put down the beer. Get inside! Put on some clothes! Call it a day!

YOU: Yes sir, that’s my wife. No sir, I do mean strife. Yes sir, she’s a major zip in my ass right now!

Hey wife! Hubcaps have one function: to cover lug nuts.

So, what’s my hubcap doing?

Ha! Ha!

ME: Dave, there’s a crowd gathering on our front lawn. I think I hear the woo wah woo wah of police cars headed up the street.

Get the hell inside!!!

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

Optatio

Optatio (op-ta’-ti-o): Expressing a wish, often ardently.

Y: I wish I could lift 300 pounds. It would be so cool to be a strong man. I could lift the front of a car, or a ATM, or all the crap piled up in your bedroom. I could be called “King Crap Lifter.” Your friends would probably build a monument to me!

OH! How I wish, I wish, I wish!

Z: Go for it dad. It’s about the only thing you’ve wished for since I was born. Your daydreams are like specks of dirt on a cracked camera lens. What you make wishes for are like specks of dirt on the specks of dirt.

So: Go for it King Hernia! And while you’re blowing out an intestine, I wish you’d pay me an allowance; then I might start picking things up.

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

Paenismus

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

Hark! I bring tidings of comfort and joy!

My new underpants from Duluth Trading Post are all they’re ‘cracked’ up to be.

I walk in comfort. I sit in comfort. I stand in comfort. I live in comfort.

Oh the comfort and joy! No more binding or chafing.

These underpants are my salvation.

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

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

I tried my hardest to keep from telling the truth–I did everything I could to misrepresent Bernie’s basic platform as a paean to neo-facist-socialist-racism, only to be thwarted by David Duke’s conversion to the Church of the Later-Day Saints and fervent support of what he calls Bernie’s “nice-guy agenda.”

I tried my best to paint Donald Trump as connected to the Church of Satan as one of the Evil One’s minions, but Anton LaVay spilled the hot coals and claimed that Donald Trump makes him want to sing songs from “Annie.”  After singing “Tomorrow” continuously for 12 hours and raising $1,000,000.00 for Mr. Trump, Mr. LaVay left for Rome and a private audience with Pope Francis and Vince, the spokesperson for Shamwow.

Given the opposition’s fluidity, credibility, and willingness to go 360, there’s no way I can besmirch Bernie or Donald–even with the truth!

Accordingly, I think the time has come!

We better call Bill: the world’s greatest truth-twister, accusation generator, and umbrage taker. He can spin innuendo faster than Duke or LaVay can detect it and deal with it, and he can dance around the truth with more gusto, flash, sensuality, and clarity than Maria Pagés does with her soul-trancing tangos.

Call the massage parlor & tell him to get his slap-happy campaign butt over here!

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

Paromologia

Paromologia (par-o-mo-lo’-gi-a): Conceding an argument, either jestingly and contemptuously, or to prove a more important point. A synonym for concessio.

Ok Ok, so I’m wrong about Hillary’s boob job–it was a good boob job! In the past 10 years I’ve become a better judge of boob jobs. Hillary’s has withstood the test of time. It has aged wonderfully and currently fits her frumpy shape.  I guess you could say she had foresight, but 10 years–come on–we need to plan a little closer to the present to really make a difference.

Take my Mexican “Wall Job” for example. It actually has a completion date set.  Not only that, over time we can build it taller and taller–some day it may cast a shadow over all of Mexico, making us more competitive in agriculture, while at the same time keeping every illegal out of our sacred USA!

But that’s not all–we can plaster the wall with solar panels and make the United States of America the solar energy center of the world.

God bless America.

God bless you.

God bless me: Donald Trump, Wealthy Seer, Real Estate Mogul, and the next president of the United States of America!

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

Simile

Simile (si’-mi-lee): An explicit comparison, often (but not necessarily) employing “like” or “as.”

Higher education in the 21st century at many colleges and universities does not successfully prepare its so-called liberally educated students to negotiate life’s vicissitudes; to negotiate uncertainties and strife with humane voices speaking in the light. Rather, from the “safe spaces” where they reside, they learn how to “take offense,” and how to willy nilly level charges that are always taken seriously, and always will be heard.

Like latter-day nazis, like blood-hungry wolves, they have forged their brutish howling voices into pointed blades of fear, turning “judicial hearings” into monologues where cowering judges have only to decide how, and how much, to punish whomever “some students” may anonymously deride.

Somewhere, this is the culture of academic residential life, where there are no consequences for telling lies. In this community of Kafka houses after every trial, when the gavel grants another win to their revengeful pride, “some students” have been known laugh out loud, smoke a joint, drink a couple of drinks, and piss on the wall of the stone prophylactic euphemistically called “residence hall.”

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

Skotison

Skotison (sko’-ti-son): Purposeful obscurity.

As I speak, a plan is being planned–a plan so well-planned that its planners plan to be nominated for the “Best Plan Ever Award!”

I can’t give you specifics right now, but I plan on doing so as soon as the planners give me the green light–right now the light’s red, but surely it will turn green, and as soon as it turns green, the plan will be known!

All hail the planners!

For their plan will be wise, and we will be the beneficiaries of the planners’ well-planned plan!

Rejoice!

Surely, a bright future awaits us!

We shall be blessed with a plan!

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

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

Synaloepha

Synaloepha (sin-a-lif’-a): Omitting one of two vowels which occur together at the end of one word and the beginning of another. A contraction of neighboring syllables. A kind of metaplasm.

I worry now more than ever.

Brazen sociopaths/seduce their victims: The Peter-Pannish boys that are ‘radicalized’ by the bearded worms that wriggle through the internet, that burrow into young hearts, that tunnel through common sense to gnaw away at conscience, sculpting the delusion they call ‘The Dream Come True.’

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

Synathroesmus

Synathroesmus (sin-ath-res’-mus): 1. The conglomeration of many words and expressions either with similar meaning (= synonymia) or not (= congeries).  2. A gathering together of things scattered throughout a speech (= accumulatio [:Bringing together various points made throughout a speech and presenting them again in a forceful, climactic way. A blend of summary and climax.])

Swinging in his hammock under the silver moon, he reminded me of a ferret–a nervous, lazy, lounger dreaming of a roosterless chicken coop overflowing with plump, juicy, sweet little slumbering hens.

Or:

She flies jets, butchers deer, tends a garden, drinks Jim Beam, wears Honey Oud Eau de Parfum, plays acoustic 12-string guitar, loves fireworks, has a black green-eyed catand fends for herself, and I love her.

Or:

The first snow of winter came today. Dreadful, damned, careless snow.

When I was a kid I loved it, played in it, built castles out of it, made money shoveling it, sledded in it, packed it into balls and threw it, made angels in it, poured maple syrup on it and ate it, made snowmen out of it, and never got tired of it.

Now, I have to drive in it and possibly die in it on some lonely stretch of back road hell, spinning sideways over a cliff or flipping over into a ditch, or hitting a tree or a deer staring at me.

Snow

Then: Fun and games. Now: old-age and pains.

Joy turns to fear, beaten down year by year by the hammer of being here.

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

Synecdoche

Synecdoche (si-nek’-do-kee): A whole is represented by naming one of its parts (or genus named for species), or vice versa (or species named for genus).

I hate the sound of a Kalashnikov on full auto.

Its clanking well-paced whack whack whack so succinctly enunciates a paean of terror, blood, and death.

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

Synonymia

Synonymia (si-no-ni’-mi-a): In general, the use of several synonyms together to amplify or explain a given subject or term. A kind of repetition that adds emotional force or intellectual clarity. Synonymia often occurs in parallel fashion. The Latin synonym, interpretatio, suggests the expository and rational nature of this figure, while another Greek synonym, congeries, suggests the emotive possibilities of this figure.

My time here is limited, short, and running out. It’s disappearing like a morning haze burnt away by the warmth of the sun.

There is no foretelling, predicting or calculating the future. All that we know is that it will be.

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

Synthesis

Synthesis (sin’-the-sis): An apt arrangement of a composition, especially regarding the sounds of adjoining syllables and words.

I struggle every day with this traumatic century. And sleep comes hard. Always vigilant, always on guard, I fear the unexpected because I don’t know what to expect.  Feeling vulnerable and unprotected I sleep with a brick beneath my pillow, six locks on my door, bars on my windows, and a pit bull on patrol; in control of mauling whatever picks my locks or chops down my flimsy apartment door.

Does anybody else live like me? Behind a tiny peephole with a deeply troubled soul, listening to random gunshots, barking sirens and a blind one-handed neighbor talking all night long? Alone, she babbles on. She longs for love. She longs for God. She longs for noisy war, and always near sunrise, she longs the most for her forever lost Victoria’s Secret thong.

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

Syntheton

Syntheton (sin’-the-ton): When by convention two words are joined by a conjunction for emphasis.

Eggs and bacon

United on a plate.

White and yellow embryos and strips of pinkish flesh.

Break the yolk and bathe the pork in what could have been a bird.

“Isn’t breakfast lovely?”

“Isn’t this weather is absurd?”

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

Synzeugma

Synzeugma (sin-zoog’-ma): That kind of zeugma in which a verb joins (and governs) two phrases by coming between them. A synonym for mesozeugma.

The tide went out, and the bottle with a message, a brief ditatribe on fate and hope and coconuts. Standng there in tattered shorts, he started to sing his coconut song and then had second thoughts as the bottle with a message sunk into the waving sea. Feeling no pain, he tore off his tattered shorts and put them on his head again, the castaway’s turban, jaunty on his brow, tickled his neck and reminded him of middle school and flirtations on the playground when up was up, and down was down.

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

Systrophe

Systrophe (si’-stro-fee): The listing of many qualities or descriptions of someone or something, without providing an explicit definition.

Slumped in the sticky slurry. Sick on the pavement–bluish red. Like a carcinoma. Like a cracked piston. Like a nosebleed that’s already bled.

Sobbing like a pig with wide eyes begging for slaughter in the dawn’s early light.

Oh, say can you see?

The loaded handgun is still here: cold gleaming proof that the end is always near.

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

Tasis (ta’-sis): Sustaining the pronunciation of a word or phrase because of its pleasant sound. A figure apparent in delivery.

Ohhhhhh babeeeee—your lips look like a bright red bow and we knowww what’s gonna happen next!

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Thaumasmus

Thaumasmus (thau-mas’-mus): To marvel at something rather than to state it in a matter of fact way.

One Refugee’s Story*

I finally got to Berlin after days of walking and taking buses and trains from somewhere else.

I awoke behind a fence with hundreds of bald-headed men covered in tattoos outside the fence, their right arms outstretched, chanting a German greeting.

I waved back and thanked them.  As I turned around I exclaimed “I am in a refugee camp!”

There were 100s of shiny sweet-smelling Porta-Potties glistening like pearls strung on a royal strand.

“Oh!” I exclaimed.

Jars and jars and jars of Nutella cleverly arranged in the shape of my homeland!

100s of rolls of soft Swiss toilet tissue–a paper Matterhorn nearly touching the blue German sky, silhouetted by hills of freeze-dried spargles forming the backdrop for 100s of galvanized barrels overflowing with foaming beer, sweet apple cider, and peppermint schnapps.

Dazed, I said to myself “Anyway, I am tired of eating flattened squirrels by the roadside, and drinking from small shallow puddles.”

Now, I will never go back to where I came from.

Already, I have learned the German phrase for “I am in paradise.” One of the tattooed bald men taught it to me: Ich gehör da nicht zu.

So, whenever I feel joy and want to express my gratitude I smile broadly and yell: Ich gehör da nicht zu.

The tattooed bald men smile too and cheer me on.

Truly, I have found a new home!

Ich gehör da nicht zu!

Heil Kanzlor Merkel!

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


*Translated by Prof. Hans Schtudentlickenheinerbachen, Hegel Professor of Other Languages, U. of Putzhaben.

Tmesis

Tmesis (tmee’-sis): Interjecting a word or phrase between parts of a compound word or between syllables of a word.

Hilary Clinton on the grill again over Ben-freakin-ghazi. Thanks for another clown show House Republicans.

The Committee’s formula for Select Idiocy:

Seven Bozos + Five Reasonable People + Thirteen Months = -$3,500,000.  Money well-spent; if you like disgusting displays of partisan politics, squandering enough US taxpayer dollars to put a small village through college, and last but not least, vomiting on your TV’s remote control.

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

Topographia

Topographia (top-o-graf’-i-a): Description of a place. A kind of enargia [: {en-ar’-gi-a} generic name for a group of figures aiming at vivid, lively description].

Dante did a pretty good job of describing hell.

But there is a hell he never imagined:

15-year-olds sitting in a classroom, eager to learn. Teacher teaching, asking questions, getting spirited well-framed answers. All is well.

Big windows. Brightly polished floors. Sun streams in on a warm Autumn day.

You know what happens next. They didn’t–they were growing, thriving angels filled with wonder and vexed by the awkwardness of being 15–just like we were when we were teens.

Over as fast as a trigger can be pulled: the banging, the flashing, the wounding, the dying.

15 year-olds in a classroom. Broken windows. Blood-stained floors. Sun streams in on a warm Autumn day.

Dreams disintegrate in the warm Autumn air.

Nothing is left but grief, anger, fear, and despair.

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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

Traductio

Traductio (tra-duk’-ti-o): Repeating the same word variously throughout a sentence or thought. Some authorities restrict traductio further to mean repeating the same word but with a different meaning (see ploceantanaclasis, and diaphora), or in a different form (polyptoton). If the repeated word occurs in parallel fashion at the beginnings of phrases or clauses, it becomes anaphora; at the endings of phrases or clauses, epistrophe.

Syrian “child brides” are no longer allowed into the Netherlands accompanying their refugee husbands. “Child brides” seems like an oxymoron, like the famous “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence.” Unfortunately, “child bride” is not a figure of speech. Take for example the pregnant 14-year-old who went missing from her 40-year-old husband at one of the Netherlands’ refugees camps. Definitely a child. Definitely a bride  Definitely soon to be a mother.

Upon arrival in the Netherlands, adult husbands and their underage wives (aka child brides) should be divorced and the husbands required to pay alimony and child support for the rest of their lives.

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

Tricolon

Tricolon (tri-co-lon): Three parallel elements of the same length occurring together in a series.

I tasered him. I shot him. I killed him. Oh–I was exonerated by the grand jury–no indictment!

Clearly, to any sane person, I acted in self defense! After all, he punched me twice! The scrappy little 17-year-old boy could’ve killed me with his bare hands, or even taken my gun away from me and shot me because I was sitting on him.

Sadly and tragically and hopefully this child’s death will send a message to all the viciously aggressive, thoughtless, and reckless high beam flashers out there: If you don’t want to be dead on the pavement from seven gunshot wounds, remember,

“Put ’em on high, and you will die!”

That’s a promise.

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.

Abating

Abating: English term for anesis: adding a concluding sentence that diminishes the effect of what has been said previously. The opposite of epitasis (the addition of a concluding sentence that merely emphasizes what has already been stated. A kind of amplification).

There’s a new rapprochement between the ROK and the DPRK!  People can visit their relatives! Land-mines have been decommissioned in the DMZ! Loudspeakers silenced!

Is that all your two countries can do after 60 years of total bullshit?

What’s next, a shared franchise for a Burger King in the DMZ?

  • Do your own abating on the “Comments” page!

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

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. A Kindle edition is available for $5.99.

 

Abbaser

Abbaser [George] Puttenham’s English term for tapinosis. Also equivalent to meiosis: reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes: deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite).

His hand blown off by the bomb blast, according to the news reporter in Ankara, my friend was “injured.” He isn’t injured, he is maimed for life.

Oh yeah news idiot, he was “injured” by the bomb blast, just like the woman who was standing next to him. Blown to bits, let’s call her terminally wounded.

Post your own abbaser on the “Comments” page!

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.

Buy a print edition of The Daily Trope! The print edition is entitled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99. A Kindle edition is available for $5.99.