anadiplosis

Anadiplosis is a rhetorical figure of speech that means to "double back" and repeat a word or phrase that appears at the end of a sentence or clause at the beginning of the next sentence or clause. More generally, it refers to rhetorical repetition for emphasis.

Examples

• "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung" — Byron
• "Queeg: 'Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard. Standard performance is sub-standard. Sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist.'" —Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny.
• " Having power makes [totalitarian leadership] isolated; isolation breeds insecurity; insecurity breeds suspicion and fear; suspicion and fear breed violence." —Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism
• "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." —Yoda, Star Wars
• "The frog was a prince / The prince was a brick / The brick was an egg / The egg was a bird" —Supper's Ready by Genesis

Other uses

The word was also used in archaic medicine, for a reduplication of the fits, or paroxysms of fevers, in which sense, some writers also called it epanadiplosis.

See also

• Epanalepsis
• Figure of speech

References

• This article incorporates content from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain.
• Corbett, Edward P.J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford University Press, New York, 1971.
• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, p. 673. ISBN 0-674-36250-0. 

External links

• Audio illustrations of anadiplosis

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