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Literature. A saying is any concise expression that is especially memorable because of its meaning or style. A saying often shows a wisdom or cultural standard, having different meanings than just the words themselves. [1] Sayings are categorized as follows: Aphorism: a general, observational truth; "a pithy expression of wisdom or truth". [2]
Synonym. A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. [2] For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one ...
A thesaurus (pl.: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [1] [2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms.
Semantic satiation. Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, [1] who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis (staring at the word or phrase for a long time) in place of repetition also produces the ...
Response to sneezing. In English -speaking countries, the common verbal response to another person's sneeze is "(God) bless you", or less commonly in the United States and Canada, "Gesundheit", the German word for health (and the response to sneezing in German-speaking countries). There are several proposed origins of the phrase "bless-you" for ...
Apophasis. Apophasis (/ əˈpɒfəsɪs /; from Ancient Greek ἀπόφασις (apóphasis), from ἀπόφημι (apóphemi) 'to say no') [1][2] is a rhetorical device wherein the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up. [3] Accordingly, it can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony.
Likewise, an annulment is a judicial declaration of the invalidity or nullity of a marriage ab initio: the so-called marriage was "no thing" (Latin: nullius, from which the word "nullity" derives) and never existed, except perhaps in name only. ab intestato: from an intestate
Tautology (language) In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". [1][2] Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. [3] Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style ...