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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 ...
Grok (/ ˈ ɡ r ɒ k /) is a neologism coined by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land.While the Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the meaning of grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment", [1] Heinlein's ...
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world.The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. [1] The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English.
An idiom is an expression that has a figurative meaning often related, but different from the literal meaning of the phrase. Example: You should keep your eye out for him. A pun is an expression intended for a humorous or rhetorical effect by exploiting different meanings of words. Example: I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it ...
A common definition of metaphor presents it as a comparison that shows how two things, which are not alike in most ways, are similar in another important way. In this context, metaphors contribute to the creation of multiple meanings within polysemic complexes across different languages. [33]
Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme (the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary). For example, the lexeme be (as in to be ) comprises all its conjugations ( is , was , am , are , were , etc.), and contractions of those conjugations. [ 5 ]
Cicero uses the word to mean simplicity (or frugality) of life. The meaning and the function of the word changed from 'simple' to the idea of understatement that involves double negatives, a way to state things simply. Old Norse had several types of litotes. These points are denied negatives ("She's not a terrible wife" meaning "she's a good ...
The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, [1] often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, "an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description ...