Long Time Coming

Way back on June 22 I used the word onomatopoetic, then at the end of July I referenced the word onomatopoeia, with the comment “one of these days I’ll get around to that good word.” Today is the day!


I could have included it in the September 29 blog post that was about rhetorical devices, but it was more about William F. Buckley’s words, so it didn’t fit nicely there and I didn’t need to fill the space. But having come across another word that is a figure of speech (and the first word that begins with the letter z to be discussed on this blog) the subject is overdue.

Onomatopoeia (one of the few words in English that ends with four different vowels) is the formation of a word by imitating the natural sound associated with the object or action involved; echoism. For instance, “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” is onomatopoetic. (For those of you under the age of 46, that may be an obscure reference. The reference is to a commercial that appeared before 1965. A good read and explanation is found here.)

The word onomatopoeia first appeared in English in the 1570s. It came through Late Latin from its original Greek where it was spelled only slightly differently, onomatopoiia. In Greek onomatopoiia means “the making of a name or word”. It is derived from the Greek words onoma, name or word, and poiein, compose or make. We also get the word poet from poiein.

The “z” word is zeugma, and is a figure of speech in which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, in syntactically related to two or more words, with only one of which it seems logically connected. My dictionary gives as an example “The room was not light, but his fingers were.” Another example is “wage war and peace.”

Zeugma is only a decade more recent in usage than onomatopoeia, coming to English in the 1580s directly from the Greek. (Why involve those Late Latins? If they’re late, they can find their own words.) The word is derived (and you’ll be glad to find out it didn’t just get adopted in total) from the Greek word zeugnynai, which means “to yoke”. Try spelling that after only one reading.

A zeugma is similar to syllepsis (see the aforementioned Sept. 29 blog), but not identical. According to grammar.about.com “Rhetorician Edward Corbett offers this distinction between zeugma and syllepsis: in zeugma, unlike syllepsis, the single word does not fit grammatically or idiomatically with one member of the pair.” According to Wikipedia, “A syllepsis is a particular kind of zeugma, and there is a clear distinction between the two in classical treatises written on the subject.” You’re welcome to go looking for those classical treatises, but I don’t think you’ll get in trouble for making the wrong distinction. If so, blame me.

It is difficult to find clear examples of each, but my favorite of one or the other is the Alanis Morissette song “Head Over Feet” which has the line “you held your breath and the door for me.”