Vocabulary

Scrawny : If you describe a person or animal as scrawny, you mean that they look unattractive
because they are so thin.

Oath : An oath is a formal promise, especially a promise to be loyal to a person or country.

Wield: If you wield a weapon, tool, or piece of equipment, you carry and use it.

Sledgehammer : A sledgehammer is a large, heavy hammer with a long handle, used for breaking
up rocks and concrete.

Lone: If you talk about a lone person or thing, you mean that they are alone.

Rhetoric is the skill or art of using language effectively. (FORMAL)

Rhetorical Terms

Parallelism: In the English language, parallelism refers to balance created between two or more similar
words and sentences.
For example, I like rich desserts, fast card-games, and difficult riddles.

Anaphora: The term 'anaphora' originated from the Greek word meaning 'carrying back'. It can be
defined as a repetition or a rhetorical device where the same word or phrase is repeated at regular
intervals, which could be in the beginning or the middle of a line, a sentence or a clause.

Anaphora: The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses,
clauses, or paragraphs; for example, "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing
grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills" (Winston S. Churchill).

Antithesis: literal meaning opposite, is a rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together
in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect.

Epistrophe: Epistrophe or epiphora is the repetition of the same word or words at the end of
consecutive phrases, clauses or sentences. It is extremely emphatic and is usually employed to stress
the last word in a phrase or sentence.
For example, "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us." –
Emerson

A periodic sentence is a sentence which has been deliberately structured to place the main point at
the end. Therefore, a period sentence will have its main clause or predicate as the last part. Usually, a
periodic sentence will be a busy sentence. Often, the very last word in the sentence will be the point
the writer wants to emphasize.

When I was shopping in the town yesterday, I saw Mike.

A loose sentence, also called a cumulative sentence, begins with a main clause that is followed by
phrases and/or clauses that modify the main clause. These phrases or clauses add information to the
main or independent clause.

I went to the movies yesterday, bought candy, and shopped at the mall.

Inversion, also known as anastrophe, is a literary technique in which the normal order of words is
reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter.