#epizeuxis

I’ve had these desires lately. These cravings, if you will. The desire to feed a hungry chubby feedee beyond their capacity, to stuff them completely to a point where they struggle to move. And then of course, finish them off with some very well deserved grinding....

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.” 

Epizeuxis, n. /ep’i-zük’sis/ - A figure by which a word is repeated with vehemence or emphasis.

Build Your Vocabulary | Epizeuxis

Word of the Day SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2020 epizeuxis [ ep-i-zook-sis ] 

noun

a literary or rhetorical device that appeals to or invokes the reader’s or listener’s emotions through the repetition of words in quick succession.

Word of the Day Credit: Dictionary.com

Photo Credit: Giphy.com