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However, in British English, the word "fag" can be an inoffensive term used to refer to a cigarette, or, previously, a junior boy who serves a senior boy in a British public school. [7] Likewise, the word "fanny" when used in American English is a euphemism for one's buttocks, so benign that children use it.
The main body of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, however, is focused upon an overview of the classic canon of English literature extending from Beowulf to Evelyn Waugh. There is another chapter after this discussing American literature from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Flannery O'Connor. Each chapter has:
Oxymorons in the narrow sense are a rhetorical device used deliberately by the speaker and intended to be understood as such by the listener. In a more extended sense, the term "oxymoron" has also been applied to inadvertent or incidental contradictions, as in the case of "dead metaphors" ("barely clothed" or "terribly good").
[88] (opposite of appeal to tradition) Appeal to poverty (argumentum ad Lazarum) – supporting a conclusion because the arguer is poor (or refuting because the arguer is wealthy). (Opposite of appeal to wealth.) [89] Appeal to tradition (argumentum ad antiquitatem) – a conclusion supported solely because it has long been held to be true. [90]
Pathetic fallacy (also known as anthropomorphic fallacy or anthropomorphization) is a specific type [dubious – discuss] of reification. Just as reification is the attribution of concrete characteristics to an abstract idea, a pathetic fallacy is committed when those characteristics are specifically human characteristics, especially thoughts or feelings. [13]
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Opposites may be viewed as a special type of incompatibility. [1] Words that are incompatible create the following type of entailment (where X is a given word and Y is a different word incompatible with word X): [2] sentence A is X entails sentence A is not Y [3] An example of an incompatible pair of words is cat : dog:
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription.A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form or phrase they use is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to ...