Words & WritingGreek → English
Zeugma
/ˈzjuːɡmə/noun
A figure in which one word governs two others in incongruous senses.
The Greek roots
ζεῦγμα
zeûgma
a yoking, bond
Literally: “a yoking together”
Follow a root:ζεῦγμα1 word
The story of the word
Dickens gives the standard example: Mr Pickwick took his hat and his leave. The Greek is farmyard vocabulary before it is literary, a zeugma being the yoke across two oxen and zeugos the team itself. Rhetoricians have split hairs for centuries over where zeugma ends and syllepsis begins, and have never settled it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
zygotesyzygyzygomatic
In a sentence
She left in a taxi and a temper, which is a zeugma old enough to have a beard.