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An anticlimax or anti-climax is an abrupt descent (either deliberate or unintended) on the part of a speaker or writer from the dignity of idea at which they appeared to aim, [10] as in: "The English poet Herrick expressed the same sentiment when he suggested that we should gather rosebuds while we may.
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from straightforward language use or literal meaning to produce a rhetorical or intensified effect (emotionally, aesthetically, intellectually, etc.). [1] [2] In the distinction between literal and figurative language, figures of speech constitute the latter.
Antanaclasis – a figure of speech involving a pun, consisting of the repeated use of the same word, each time with different meanings. Anticlimax – a bathetic collapse from an elevated subject to a mundane or vulgar one. Antimetabole – repetition of two words or short phrases, but in reversed order to establish a contrast.
Catacosmesis is the Greek word for "to set in order". [1] In rhetoric, it refers to a device in which there is a descending order of words or phrases, either in order of importance, dignity or time, and either abrupt or gradual. [2] [3] It is considered to be synonymous with anticlimax. [4]
A paraprosdokian (/ p ær ə p r ɒ s ˈ d oʊ k i ə n /), or par'hyponoian, is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.
When a loose cannon flogs a dead horse there's the devil to pay: seafaring words in everyday speech. Camden ME: International Marine. ISBN 978-0-07-032877-8. Miller, Charles A. (2003). Ship of state: the nautical metaphors of Thomas Jefferson : with numerous examples by other writers from classical antiquity to the present. Lanham, MD ...
Anti-climax or anticlimax (that is, the opposite of climax in its various meanings) may refer to: Anticlimax (narrative), a literary element; Anticlimax (figure of speech), a rhetorical device; Anticlimax, a genus of sea snails; Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, a 1990 book by Sheila Jeffreys
Quintilian saw rhetoric as the science of the possible deviation from a given norm, or from a pre-existing text taken as a model. Each variation can be seen as a figure (figures of speech or figures of thought). [4] From this perspective, Quintilian famously formulated four fundamental operations according to the analysis of any such variation.