| Important caution regarding English terms |
This may not be the best way to browse rhetorical figures!
English terms for the figures of speech are sometimes very useful for clarifying or remembering what are otherwise very difficult foreign terms. For example, "restatement" is probably easier to understand and remember than its proper Greek name, "epidiegesis."
However, there are several problems with relying mainly on English terms:
- English terms are often not as specific as the Greek or Latin terms,
leading to confusion
For example, the English term "repetition" could refer to nearly any of the 40+ figures of repetition for which there are separate Greek or Latin terms (see figures of repetition). - Many of the English terms are quirky or made-up terms that don't actually
help modern minds understand or remember the figures
For example, George Puttenham's term, "curry favell" (for paradiastole) requires its own explanation before modern readers even understand what his English term means. - The English terms are much less consistent than the Greek and Latin
terms.
Even though there have been many variations through the centuries, by and large "hyperbole" meant the exact same thing to the Greeks of 500 B.C. as it has meant to Roman educators at the time of Christ, medieval scholars, or European humanists in the Renaissance. - When some Greek or Latin terms are anglicized into English terms,
they are homonyms to English words with very different meanings.
For example, the English word "correction" does not denote the very specific rhetorical strategy designated by the Latin term "correctio." Or, the Greek term, "apostrophe" means something quite different than the English punctuation mark that has the same name.
