Thursday, April 24, 2008

A Figure of Splendor

As the semester winds down (or up--take your pick), the blog suffers. But I do want to point out quickly that the featured figure in my last post was Antiptosis, the substitution of a prepositional phrase for an adjective. For example, I wrote "presence of massiveness" instead of "massive presence", and "admiring words of sincerity" instead of "sincere words of admiration", and "America of the mainstream" instead of "mainstream America".

The example of this figure that always sticks in my mind is "tower of strength" for "strong tower." So picture your sister standing on tip toe and holding a rather formidable looking tower in her hands. "On tip toe sis" will forever bring this figure to mind.

If you don't have a sister, you could imagine a nun or perhaps the sister of a friend.

OK, I'm in a hurry of greatness here--more later.

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