Writing Help 129 | - ☆ Freelance Writer
Mar 29, 2013 | #1
Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight
Although this word looks highly foreign and practically unpronounceable, it describes a rhetorical device that you have certainly heard many times in your life, potentially even this very day. The strange look of the word, featuring the noticeable absence of a vowel between the consonant pair t and m, is a result of its Greek origins. It comes from the Greek noun meaning cut, and knowing this will help you to remember what the word means and how it is used.
Tmesis is the insertion of a word or words between parts of a compound word, or even between syllables of any word, to add emphasis or humor. The Greeks and later the Romans used this device to create interesting effects, especially within their infinitive verb forms that, unlike ours, were composed of single words (whereas ours are constructed from the preposition to followed by the verb proper), meaning that splitting them is hardly seen as anything extraordinary (though some hard-line grammarians would call the insertion of words between parts of the infinitive an error). Tmesis sounds complicated at first, but once you have read some examples, you will have no problem recognizing this device, and will likely come up with many of your own examples to compliment these:
"He wanted me to do the im-bloody-possible, and I told him to go to hell!"
"That was an abso-f%$ing-lutely fan-fu%$ing-tastic concert!"
"Hi-diddly-ho neighbor!"
The one thing all of these statements have in common, besides the exclamation mark which follows them, is the insertion of a word within another word somewhere within the sentence. In the first example, we get the very British-sounding bloody sandwiched between the two halves of the word impossible. In modern English, both in North America and abroad, the inserted word in any case of tmesis is almost always an explicative. As a result, it is used to express anger, frustration, or excitement, and so the device almost always adds a heightened feeling to the sentence in which it occurs, which accounts for the aforementioned exclamation marks all of the sentences above have in common.
The second sentence is the sort I have heard most often, and one which I believe to be most widely used in spoken English, though not in print for reasons of censorship. In more polite company, one may substitute the word frigging, friggin', fricking, frickin', freaking, or freakin' in place of the widely deprecated (yet somehow ubiquitous) F-word. Here, as opposed to the first example, a positive evaluation of an experience results in the joy that tmesis is used to express, and although it may sound vulgar to some ears, whoever is uttering the sentence means no offence and is not being in any way insulting. I must admit I am a fan of this construction in the form in which it is here listed; however, if you find yourself in company which would not appreciate this use of the word, I suggest forgetting about it completely rather than substituting one of the optional, less offensive F-words listed above. It is a device designed to add great emphasis, and by substituting the main intensifying word, you are castrating the rhetorical effect.
As many of you will know already, the final example is taken from the long-running animated sitcom The Simpsons. One of the major characters, Ned Flanders, is a very enthusiastic (and I use this term deliberately: look up its origins to see why it is so appropriate) Christian do-gooder who has likely only uttered a handful of vulgar expletives in his entire adult life. So, in order to add punch to his statements, Ned often inserts the word diddly between and within various words. It really has no meaning on its own, but it does convey Ned's excitement and enthusiasm very well in an appropriately Christian and neighborly way.
Tmesis
Although this word looks highly foreign and practically unpronounceable, it describes a rhetorical device that you have certainly heard many times in your life, potentially even this very day. The strange look of the word, featuring the noticeable absence of a vowel between the consonant pair t and m, is a result of its Greek origins. It comes from the Greek noun meaning cut, and knowing this will help you to remember what the word means and how it is used.
Tmesis is the insertion of a word or words between parts of a compound word, or even between syllables of any word, to add emphasis or humor. The Greeks and later the Romans used this device to create interesting effects, especially within their infinitive verb forms that, unlike ours, were composed of single words (whereas ours are constructed from the preposition to followed by the verb proper), meaning that splitting them is hardly seen as anything extraordinary (though some hard-line grammarians would call the insertion of words between parts of the infinitive an error). Tmesis sounds complicated at first, but once you have read some examples, you will have no problem recognizing this device, and will likely come up with many of your own examples to compliment these:"He wanted me to do the im-bloody-possible, and I told him to go to hell!"
"That was an abso-f%$ing-lutely fan-fu%$ing-tastic concert!"
"Hi-diddly-ho neighbor!"
The one thing all of these statements have in common, besides the exclamation mark which follows them, is the insertion of a word within another word somewhere within the sentence. In the first example, we get the very British-sounding bloody sandwiched between the two halves of the word impossible. In modern English, both in North America and abroad, the inserted word in any case of tmesis is almost always an explicative. As a result, it is used to express anger, frustration, or excitement, and so the device almost always adds a heightened feeling to the sentence in which it occurs, which accounts for the aforementioned exclamation marks all of the sentences above have in common.
The second sentence is the sort I have heard most often, and one which I believe to be most widely used in spoken English, though not in print for reasons of censorship. In more polite company, one may substitute the word frigging, friggin', fricking, frickin', freaking, or freakin' in place of the widely deprecated (yet somehow ubiquitous) F-word. Here, as opposed to the first example, a positive evaluation of an experience results in the joy that tmesis is used to express, and although it may sound vulgar to some ears, whoever is uttering the sentence means no offence and is not being in any way insulting. I must admit I am a fan of this construction in the form in which it is here listed; however, if you find yourself in company which would not appreciate this use of the word, I suggest forgetting about it completely rather than substituting one of the optional, less offensive F-words listed above. It is a device designed to add great emphasis, and by substituting the main intensifying word, you are castrating the rhetorical effect.
As many of you will know already, the final example is taken from the long-running animated sitcom The Simpsons. One of the major characters, Ned Flanders, is a very enthusiastic (and I use this term deliberately: look up its origins to see why it is so appropriate) Christian do-gooder who has likely only uttered a handful of vulgar expletives in his entire adult life. So, in order to add punch to his statements, Ned often inserts the word diddly between and within various words. It really has no meaning on its own, but it does convey Ned's excitement and enthusiasm very well in an appropriately Christian and neighborly way.