19. HYPERBOLE/LITOTES

HYPERBOLE

• definition: an exggeration for the sake of emphasis; not to be taken seriously

HYPERBOLE

• origin: Greek
• "hyper" = over
• "bol" = to cast or throw
• term: 1520-1530
• use: 15th century BCE

HYPERBOLE

• "I haven't seen her in eons!"
• "...This my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red." - Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act II Scene II

LITOTES

• definition: a figure of speech which employs an understatement by using double negatives
• an affirmative expressed by negation of its contrary
• simply put: an understatement

LITOTES

• origin: New Latin from Greek
• "litos" = plain, small, meager
• term: 1650-1660
• use: 56BC (Cicero)

LITOTES

• "The amount the national debt has reached is not a petty sum."
• "I lived at West Egg, the — well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• meant to add irony/wit

19. PYRRHIC VICTORY

PYRRHIC VICTORY

• origin: Greek mythology
• King Pyrrhus of Epirus vs. Rome (279 AD); battle of Asculum
• Pyrrhus had a reputation for gambling too much to ensure victory
• the Macedonians won at the cost of some of their best soldiers

"...Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him..."
- John Dryden's translation of Plutarch's Pyrrhus, 75 AD

PYRRHIC VICTORY

• meaning: a victory gained at too great a cost
• "Was the victory worth the loss?"

PYRRHIC VICTORY

• "For Katniss, overthrowing the Capital was a Pyrrhic victory; she finally earned justice for her people, but at the cost of her sister's life."
• Shakespeare's Hamlet: Hamlet exacts revenge, but his country falls to Fortinbras

PYRRHIC VICTORY

• "...it would be something of a Pyrrhic victory for the Republican Establishment to block Trump at the price of giving Ted Cruz a path to the nomination as wide and straight as the Iowa stretch of I-80..." - Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

FLASH IN THE PAN

FLASH IN THE PAN

• origin: flintlock muskets
• a small pan held the gunpowder, which sometimes flared without firing a bullet
• NOT the mid-1800s California gold rush

FLASH IN THE PAN

• meaning: something which disappoints by failing to deliver anything of value, despite a showy beginning
• first known use: 1687, Elkanah Settle, Reflections on Mr. Dryden's Plays

FLASH IN THE PAN

• "The use of notes on the test proved to be a flash in the pan once the class saw that what they had written down would be of little use to them after the first five questions."

FLASH IN THE PAN

• "I would sooner trust the Chancellor's cool-headed, systematic approach to the challenges posed by the mass influx of refugees than the flash-in-the-pan cries urging her to pull up the drawbridge and slam the gates of Fortress Europe." - Joyce Marie Mushaben, CNN