paraprosdokian

It’s another rhetorical device this week. Wait, come back! It’s a good ‘un, I promise, despite the rather alarming spelling. A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the second half of the sentence is so surprising or unexpected, it causes you to reframe or reinterpret the first part. Which is a very long-winded way of saying that it makes you do a double take.

In case you’re still not sure what I’m banging on about, here are some famous examples of paraprosdokian in action:

• ‘I had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.’

• ‘There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.’

• ‘To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.’

• ‘I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather – not screaming in terror like his passengers.’ (My personal favourite – thanks to Bob Monkhouse for this banger.)

Geddit? Paraprosdokian plays a trick on how human brains process language. As we read or listen to a sentence, our minds predict how it’ll end based on the context. A paraprosdokian deliberately feeds your brain a familiar setup, lets you walk down that path, then pulls the rug out from under you with a surprise twist. (Not sure why there’s a rug on a path, but you get what I mean.)

As you’ve probably already guessed from the spelling, ‘paraprosdokian’ (which is pronounced para-proz-DOH-kee-un, in case you’re planning to try to impress someone with it later) comes from Ancient Greek. It’s made up of three bits:

• para- (παρά), meaning ‘against’, ‘beyond’ or ‘contrary to’

• pros- (πρός), a prefix meaning ‘toward’ or ‘in addition’

• dokian (δοκία) which comes from dokein (δοκεῖν), meaning ‘to expect’, ‘to think’ or ‘to seem’.

Put it altogether and you get ‘against expectation’ or ‘contrary to what was expected’.

In a neat little twist, paraprosdokian isn’t really what it seems though. While ancient Greek rhetoricians may well have used the technique, the term isn’t actually old at all. In fact, it first appeared in 1896, although no one seems to be sure which smartarse actually coined it.

rhetoric

Nowadays, when we say something is ‘rhetoric’, we usually mean it’s a load of bollocks designed to manipulate whoever’s unlucky enough to be listening to it. But this much-maligned word didn’t always have such a negative meaning. In fact, ‘rhetoric’ used to simply refer to the art of persuasion. Throughout Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ‘rhetoric’ was a prestigious and essential academic discipline, and one of three ancient arts of discourse (also called trivium) along with grammar (yay!) and logic (boo!).

Rhetoric, innit

The word ‘rhetoric’ has a Proto-Indo-European root, *werh₁, which means ‘to speak’ or ‘to say’. This appeared during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, i.e. bloody ages ago (about 6,500 to 4,500 years ago, if you want actual numbers. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the weird notation, the asterisk means the word was never written down, and the small 1 marks a soft throat sound, apparently). *werh₁ evolved into an Ancient Greek word, eírein, also meaning ‘to speak’, which then produced rhētōr meaning a public speaker or orator (although I’m not sure how – it’s something to do with the Greek letter for W vanishing, I think, but much too boring to go into here, which is saying something). To further complicate things, the Greeks then took the root of rhētōr and added the adjective ending -ikē (meaning ‘pertaining to’ or ‘the skill of’) which created a new adjective, rhētorikē, meaning ‘oratorical’. This clearly wasn’t complicated enough though, so they stuck tékhnē (‘art’, ‘craft’ or ‘technique’) on the end to make it mean ‘the oratorical craft’ or ‘the art of the public speaker’.

Understandably, as time passed people stopped bothering with the tékhnē bit, and just used rhētorikē on its own to mean ‘the art of speaking’. This made its way into Latin as rhētorica, then into 12th-century Old French as retorique, and finally into Middle English in the early 14th century as rethoryke or rhetorik.

Annnnnnd relax.

Now we all know too much about rhetoric, let’s have a look at the tools and techniques that people use when they’re trying to be good at it, AKA rhetorical devices. There are bloody loads of these, and they all have very long complicated names, so I’ll just give you a few. I can almost certainly guarantee you’ve used at least some of them in everyday speech.

Complicated name	Sounds like…	Actually is…	In action
Epizeuxis	Something that hangs at the back of your throat	Repeating a word or phrase back-to-back with no other words in between to make a point	‘Location, location, location.’
Anaphora	A shop that sells overpriced makeup	Repeating a phrase at the start of sentences or clauses for emphasis	‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields…’
Tricolon	A bowel complaint	Grouping things in threes to add rhythm and punch	‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
Hyperbole	An American sports event that no one outside America cares about	Deliberate, extreme exaggeration used to make a point or emphasise a feeling, and not meant to be taken literally (and pronounced ‘hy-PER-buh-lee’, confusingly)	‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’

What about rhetorical questions, I hear you ask in a not-rhetorical way. Yes, rhetorical questions come directly from the study of rhetoric. They’re called that because they were traditionally used to make a point or persuade an audience, with the answer either immediately given by the speaker, or being so bleedin’ obvious that they didn’t need to. In speechmaking, posing a question forces the listener’s brain to process the thought actively rather than just listening (or drifting off…). Rhetorical questions also subtly steer an audience’s thinking without explicitly telling them what to think. Sneaky, huh?

cacophony

A cacophony is a big old noise, and an unpleasant one at that. Looking and sounding as chaotic as what it describes, ‘cacophony’ comes from the Greek kakophōnía. That’s a mash-up of kakos meaning ‘bad’, and phōnē which means ‘voice’ or ‘sound’. So it literally means ‘bad sound’. No sugar-coating here.

In classical rhetoric (the ancient art of persuasion through language), ‘cacophony’ referred specifically to harsh or clashing combinations of sounds in speech or writing – phrases that were awkward to say, unpleasant to hear or stylistically jarring. So if a sentence was hard to say out loud or just didn’t flow well, it might be criticised as ‘cacophonous’.

‘Cacophony’ first turned up in English in the mid-1600s, when people were busy developing new types of machinery and opera. So you can see why a word for noisy noises might be useful. Its first appearance in print was in Thomas Blout’s Glossographia, one of the earliest dictionaries (published in 1656 with the subtitle ‘A Dictionary Interpreting All Such Hard Words… As Are Now Used in Our Refined English Tongue’ which I love). There it was used to describe ‘an ill, harsh, or unpleasing sound’.

Despite its unpleasant meaning, ‘cacophony’ has a classy family tree, sharing a root with ‘symphony’ – that’s the same phōnē, but this time combined with sym-, meaning together. Its antonym (a fancy way of saying ‘opposite’) is the lesser-known ‘euphony’, which literally means ‘good sound’.

trivia

You know what trivia is – information that’s usually quite interesting and perhaps not that widely known, but probably not that important. Also a thing that you have to have ready when you’re female and you tell a man you’re interested in something, and he immediately asks you to prove it (actual conversations with male friends: ‘I’m a big Star Wars fan.’ ‘Really? How many forms of communication is C-3PO fluent in*?’ And: ‘I love watching tennis.’ ‘Yes? How many French Opens has Nadal won**?’)

The word ‘trivia’ comes from Latin and is the plural form of ‘trivium’ (but don’t ever use the singular version because you’ll sound like a dick), which means ‘place where three roads meet’. In ancient Rome, ‘trivium’ was used to refer to the three subjects of the beginners’ liberal arts course at university, which were: grammar (my fave), rhetoric (the study and practice of persuasive public speaking) and logic (a branch of philosophy focusing on valid and sound reasoning). While these might not seem that trivial to us, the fact that ‘trivium’ was the name for the beginners’ class is probably why it’s since evolved to refer to less important information.

I asked my robot overlord, ChatGPT, to tell me some trivia, and here’s what it said:

• Honey never spoils. Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still perfectly edible.

• The shortest war in history occurred between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896. It lasted only 38 minutes.

• The world’s oldest known recipe is for beer. It dates back to ancient Sumeria around 1800 BCE.

• The Eiffel Tower in Paris was originally intended to be a temporary structure, built for the 1889 World’s Fair. It was almost dismantled afterward but was saved because of its value as a radio transmission tower.

• The average person spends around six months of their lifetime waiting at red traffic lights.

• The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.

• The world’s largest flower is the Rafflesia arnoldii, which can grow up to three feet in diameter and weigh up to 24 pounds. It’s also known for its distinctive smell, often likened to that of rotting flesh.

• Astronauts’ height can change in space. Without the force of gravity compressing their spines, they can grow up to 2 inches taller while spending extended periods in space.

*It’s six million. Which I did know.

** It’s 14. Which I didn’t know. But I do now, and I’m ready for you, men.