Lang Terms Parallelism

anaphora

Repetition of same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses.

ex. I like ice cream. I like dogs. I like sleep.

asyndeton

deliberate omission of conjunction in a series of related clauses

ex. Eat, sleep, work, repeat.

Antimetabole

A strategy (a form of chiasmus) in which the arrangement of ideas in the second clause is a reversal of the first.

ex. Eat to live, don’t live to eat.

Polysyndeton

Deliberate use of many conjunctions for special emphasis to highlight quantity or mass of detail or to create a flowing, continuous sentence pattern

ex. And the rain fell and the wind blew and the trees swayed

stichomythia

Dialogue in which the endings and beginnings of each line echo each other, taking on a new meaning with each new line

zeugma

The use of a verb that has two different meanings with objects that complement both meanings.

ex. He broke her car and her heart.

antithesis

The juxtaposition of sharply contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words, phrases, grammatical structure, or ideas.

ex. Easy come, easy go.

chiasmus

The order of modifiers, terms, or simply sentence structure in the first half of a parallel clause is reversed in the second.

ex. Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country

isocolon

Parallel structure in which the parallel elements are similar not only in grammatical structure but also in length.

ex. Buy one, get one.

epanalepsis

Repeat the beginning word of a clause or sentence at the end. The beginning and end are the two positions of strongest emphasis, so special attention is called by having the same word in both places.

ex. Nothing is worse than doing nothing.