Words & WritingGreek → English
Epizeuxis
/ˌɛpɪˈzjuːksɪs/noun
The immediate repetition of a word or phrase for emphasis, with nothing in between.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon
ζευγνύναι
zeugnýnai
to yoke, join
Literally: “a yoking upon”
The story of the word
The bluntest instrument in the rhetorical kit and the hardest to fake: Lear's howl, howl, howl, howl, howl over Cordelia, or Churchill's never give in, never, never, never. Greek rhetoricians filed it under the yoking metaphor because the repeated words are harnessed side by side. The same root gives zeugma, where one verb pulls two objects at once, and the yoke itself is cognate with English yoke through Indo-European.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
zeugmasyzygyyoke
In a sentence
The chorus is one word of epizeuxis repeated until it stops meaning anything.
Used twice in a speech, epizeuxis lands; used six times, it nags.