Polyptoton

This is the repeated use of one word as in different parts of speech or grammatical structures.1 It’s a figure of emphasis. It’s also called paregmenon.2 Greek for “having many cases.”3

Examples include:

  • The Beatles’ “Please Please Me”
  • “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove.” —Shakespeare
  • “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
  • “But me no buts.” —Susanna Centlivre
  • “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” —Neil Armstrong (also a good example of Antithesis)

  1. The Elements of Eloquence pg. 17 ↩

  2. Definition and Examples of Polyptoton in Rhetoric ↩

  3. polyptoton - Wiktionary ↩

Notes mentioning this note

Different types of repetition
Different types of repetition [[Epistrophe]] [[Anaphora]] [[Epizeuxis]] [[Anadiplosis]] [[Polyptoton]]
Polyptoton
Polyptoton This is the repeated use of one word as in different parts of speech or grammatical structures.1 It’s a...