We’re going to discuss the first of a few rather interesting stylistic options this month…ones that you may have seen but didn’t even know had a name, and we’ll see about covering a few more next month . All of them appear in poetic writing and have to do with repeating ideas, but they differ in how the repetition is done. Redundancy can be good…as long as it’s not overdone, but if your writing is full of reduplications, your readers may get tired of it. Keep your use of repetitions under control, and you can use the following techniques for emphasis or to establish a character trait.
Pleonasm
When you use too many words to get an idea across, you may be accused of rambling or having verborrhea (the medical term is more properly logorrhea). Many readers will complain if you go on and on without getting to the point, but sometimes it works…as long as you are doing it with some plan in mind. The word ‘pleonasm’ comes from the Greek ‘pleon’ meaning ‘more, too much, or most’ and refers to redundant words. Let me list some examples:
- Burning fire (fire always burns)
- Dark night (night is always dark…unless you’re making the point that this night is moonless)
- Redundant and pleonastic (synonyms)
- Two separate cars (cars are always separate)
- Free gift (aren’t all gifts inherently free?)
- Completely destroyed (can it be only partially destroyed?)
- Shrugged her shoulders (what else can you shrug?)
- Nodded his head (can you nod something else?)
Some pleonastic words exist because of mixing languages together. Consider:
- Pizza pie (‘pizza’ is Italian for ‘pie’)
- River Avon (‘avon’ is Welsh for ‘river’)
- Head honcho (‘hancho’ is Japanese for ‘group leader’)
- Chai tea (‘chá (茶) is Chinese for ‘tea’)
- Mount Fujiyama (‘Fujiyama’ is Japanese for ‘Fuji Mountain’)
So, repeating yourself to stress some important point (consider Chekhov’s Gun) or show that a character always talks like that is perfectly fine…just make certain you’re doing it intentionally and not out of habit.
Chiasmus
This form of repetition switches things around, in fact the word comes to us from the Greek ‘chiázō’, meaning ‘shaped like the letter chi (which became our English ‘X’) as it reverses the concepts being repeated. It takes a pair of concepts in a statement and presents them in reversed order in the next. The arrangement helps make the idea memorable, so it works well when presenting reasons for consideration. Here are some examples:
- By day the frolic, and the dance by night
- Despised, if ugly; if she’s fair, betrayed
- Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves
- Love without end, and without measure Grace
- She went to church, but to the bar went he
- She has all my love; my heart belongs to her
You’ll notice that the second set of concepts can either be synonyms (frolic=dance, dotes=loves, doubts=suspects) or antonyms (day≠night, ugly≠fair, church≠bar), but they are related in some way, as is required. Just switching ideas around, does not make it chiasmus, for example: “She appreciated a tall, cold drink, but Eric was also her love.” Although appreciated is similar to love, Eric is neither similar to nor the opposite of a drink.
Antimetabole
The term chiasmus refers to reversing concepts or ideas…not exact words. When the words themselves are repeated, the proper term is ‘antimetabole’ from the Greek ἀντί (antí), “against, opposite” and μεταβολή (metabolē), “turning about, change.” It works similarly to chiasmus but uses the same words in reverse order. Here are some examples of this form:
- One for all, and all for one
- Eat to live, or live to eat
- If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
- Say what you mean, and mean what you say
- Fair is foul, and foul is fair
- Better have it and not need it than to need it and not have it (one of my favourites)
Many folks consider antimetabole to be a subset of chiasmus…some don’t. Either way, they are definitely related. Next month we’ll address a few more ways you can repeat yourself…and make it beautiful.