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  2. Damning with faint praise - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise

    According to William Shepard Walsh, "There is a faint anticipation in William Wycherley's Double Dealer, "and libels everybody with dull praise," but a closer parallel is in Phineas Fletcher: When needs he must, yet faintly then he praises, Somewhat the deed, much more the means he raises: So marreth what he makes, and praising most, dispraises.

  3. Oxymoron - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron

    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").

  4. List of commonly misused English words - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commonly_misused...

    There may be regional variations in grammar, orthography, and word-use, especially between different English-speaking countries. Such differences are not classified normatively as non-standard or "incorrect" once they have gained widespread acceptance in a particular country.

  5. Glossary of literary terms - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_literary_terms

    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 ...

  6. English grammar - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_grammar

    The first published English grammar was a Pamphlet for Grammar of 1586, written by William Bullokar with the stated goal of demonstrating that English was just as rule-based as Latin. Bullokar's grammar was faithfully modeled on William Lily's Latin grammar, Rudimenta Grammatices (1534), used in English schools at that time, having been ...

  7. List of English words with disputed usage - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with...

    A aggravate – Some have argued that this word should not be used in the sense of "to annoy" or "to oppress", but only to mean "to make worse". According to AHDI, the use of "aggravate" as "annoy" occurs in English as far back as the 17th century. In Latin, from which the word was borrowed, both meanings were used. Sixty-eight percent of AHD4's usage panel approves of its use in "It's the ...

  8. Caesura - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesura

    This line includes a masculine caesura after θεὰ, a natural break that separates the line into two logical parts. Homeric lines more commonly employ feminine caesurae; this preference is observed to an even higher degree among the Alexandrian poets. [3] An example of a feminine caesura is the opening line of the Odyssey:

  9. Synonym - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym

    A thesaurus or synonym dictionary lists similar or related words; these are often, but not always, synonyms. [15] The word poecilonym is a rare synonym of the word synonym. It is not entered in most major dictionaries and is a curiosity or piece of trivia for being an autological word because of its meta quality as a synonym of synonym.