The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

by Mark Forsyth

A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer’s day Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad ’mid her reeds

Alliterations by John Keats, almost paroemion

paroemion (that’s the technical name for excessive alliteration).

“Journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read,”

“If one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.”

“Those who can, do: those who can’t, teach”

As T. S. Eliot put it: “Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal.”

“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures” (Samuel Johnson),

Merism is when you don’t say what you’re talking about, and instead name all of its parts. Ladies and gentlemen, for example, is a merism for people,

Synaesthesia is either a mental condition whereby colours are perceived as smells, smells as sounds, sounds as tastes, etc., or it is a rhetorical device whereby one sense is described in terms of another.

Aposiopesis is Greek for becoming silent

Hyperbaton is when you put words in an odd order, which is very, very difficult to do in English.

adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun.

Ha, ha,ha

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage . . .

A hyperbaton by Richard Lovelace

Anadiplosis gives the illusion of logic. Like a conquering general it arrives at a word, plants a flag there, and then moves on. By doubling down it makes everything seem strong, structured and certain.

If the soup had been as warm as the wine, and the wine as old as the fish, and the fish as young as the maid, and the maid as willing as the hostess, it would have been a very good meal.

Anadiplosis

Using lots of conjunctions is called polysyndeton. No conjunctions is called asyndeton.

Diacope (pronounced die-ACK-oh-pee) is a verbal sandwich: a word or phrase is repeated after a brief interruption.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps into this petty place”

“Break, break, break, / On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!”

Rick tells Ilsa, “Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of,”

Isocolon

I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred Tennyson

The Life and Death of King John,

Act III, scene iii for the best speech

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. —Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it. —George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman,

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities”

Oscar Wilde

Metaphor is when two things are connected because they are similar, metonymy is when two things are connected because they are really physically connected.

Pleonasm is the use of unneeded words that are superfluous and unnecessary in a sentence that doesn’t require them.

epanalepsis: beginning and ending with the same word.

An adynaton (pronounced ad-in-ART-on) is impossible. Before an adynaton will work, pigs will fly, Hell will freeze over and the Devil will go skiing. You might as well try to get blood out of a stone. It’s therefore a very easy, if very periphrastic, way of saying no.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate; I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.

Ernest Dowson

They are not long, the days of wine and roses, Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.

Ernest Dowson

The technical name for a heap of insults is bdelygmia,