A Conversation for Selected Pretentious Literary Terminology
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Ashley Started conversation Jan 19, 2001
Great Stuff - Can I help out?
Litotes is an understatement laced with irony when you use the negative to express the opposite (positive)
Tautolgy is the unnecessary repetition of a meaning of a word eg 'green verdant bank' 'Wide Variety'
Malapropism is named after the character in Sheridan's 'The Rivals"
Ellipsis is where words have been missed when their meanings are inherent: 29th [of] March
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Bruce Posted Feb 28, 2001
Exordium - A preamble to the written or spoken treatment of a subject
Prolegomena - Introductory remarks ie a prologue or preface.
Epigraphs - those strange quotes at the beginning of chapters
Can I suggest you peruse a copy of A Superior Persons Little Book of Words & Superior persons 2nd Little Book of Words by Peter Bowdler
Where you can learn to "Lard your discourse with esoteric pejoratives, grandiloquisms and cacophemisms" You'll learn how to "insult a noisome alliaphage with impunity; how to obtain sick leave for your aprosexia; or how to be ithyphallic without giving offence" 
;^)#
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NexusSeven Posted Feb 28, 2001
Is that Bowdler as in 'bowdlerised'? As in 'with all the rude bits cut out'?
Might have to investigate that one... if only I could find my copy of Fowler's Complete English Usage...
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