#diacope

"diacope" is a rhetoric device that, when used, repeats a word or phrase consecutively with a word or phrase in between. usually used for emphasis or specification. it's derived from greek for "cut into" as a word or phrase would cut into the repition

bad at explaining: here's some examples!

"bond. james bond" uses diacope because it repeats the word "bond"! this is one of the most memorable lines in cinema and it is largely due to the use of diacope. fun fact: the name "james bond" was supposed to be plain. the writers thought a plain name (haha rhymey) like "james bond" would be good for the character to make him more relatable- like an average joe saving the world. because of the use of diacope, a guy saying his intentionally plain name becomes a well known (to understate) line! !!!

"beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins" also uses diacope due to its repitition of "beauty". my fellow dark academics will know this line from "the picture of dorian gray" and will know how important this line is to the plot. the use of diacope here is not to make it necessarily memorable (although i'll bet oscar wilde knew what he was doing) but to specify this extant "beauty" that lord henry talks about. its not just "beauty" its "real beauty"; this is effective in emphasising the importance of beauty throughout the novel!! !!!

now this one is a bit of a mandela effect (affect? effect)- "fly, my pretties! fly!" uses diacope- the phrase cuts into the repitition of the word "fly". alas, it is not the actual quote. dun dun dunnnn!!! i know. insane. ive quoted fly my pretties fly too many times to count, now im saying its not the actual quote? im furious. livid. i want my own money back from me. but yes, it isnt the quote. there is no "my pretties" at all. this just shows how effective diacope is!! humans (i assume we're human) put diacope into things by ourselves!! we love it that much :) very cute. big romance. human race x diacope. i ship it, honestly.

I got an email from my friend Sir Walter the other day with an interesting question (Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway). Wally couldn’t remember the term for the literary device in which words are repeated for emphasis with very few words in between. The great example Wally gave was “Bond. James Bond.” (As a big fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I might have been more inclined to use “Dent, Arthur Dent” as my example). 

The term for that kind of literary device is “diacope.” It comes from the Greek “thiakhopi,” which means “cut in two.” 

I’m not sure if The Trammps knew they were using a diacope when they sang “Burn, baby, burn!” (Disco Inferno). But I’ll bet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew what he was doing when he said “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!” 

The most famous diacope is probably “To be, or not to be.” That wasn’t Shakespeare’s only diacope, though. He made excellent use of repetition, as in Richard III (“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”), Romeo and Juliet (“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”) and Henry V (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”). 

Another famous Englishman had another famous diacope. In 1940, Winston Churchill rallied his nation against the threat of Nazism, saying “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Good stuff. 

These days, the most memorable uses of diacope come from advertising agencies. “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” “Home Depot: More saving. More doing.” “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” And even the immortal, “You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully clean.” 

And while we’re on the subject of literary devices that rely on repetition, there are a few special kinds. One is “epistrophe,” where the repeated word or phrase comes at the end of the sentence, like Abe Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” When using “anaphora” the repetition is at the beginning. Think of the movie The Three Amigos: “Wherever there is injustice, you will find us. Wherever there is suffering, we’ll be there. Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find…the Three Amigos.” 

And “epizeuxis” (dontcha just love that word?) is the term when a word or phrase is repeated with no other words in between, like: “Oh, the horror. The horror!” or Monty Python’s “Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam.” Or possibly even “Give me a break; give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar.” 

Bob Dylan

For impact: It's diacope baby, diacope"

by Peter Watts

Oh dear. It wasn’t my intention but I appear to be channeling Austin Powers, which…

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