Words & WritingGreek → English
Epanalepsis
/ɪˌpanəˈlɛpsɪs/noun
The figure of ending a clause or sentence with the same word it began with.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon, again
ἀνά
aná
back, up
λαμβάνειν
lambánein
to take
Literally: “a taking up again”
The story of the word
The rarest of the repetition figures because the sentence has to close its own loop: blood will have blood; the king is dead, long live the king. Rhetoricians grouped it with anaphora and epistrophe as the three ways to put a word in a structurally strong position. The λαμβάνειν root also gives syllable, literally a taking-together of sounds, and epilepsy, a seizing upon.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
epilepsysyllablecatalepsyanaleptic
In a sentence
The line closes on the word it opened with, which is epanalepsis.
He noted the epanalepsis in the margin and moved on.