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Diacope

Rhetorical Devices
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Diacope repeats a word or phrase after one or more intervening words. The return creates emphasis while allowing the repeated term to gain new emotional or grammatical force.

Detailed Definition
Diacope places a repeated word or phrase at two points in a short span, separated by intervening language. The gap creates suspense or development: the first occurrence introduces an idea, while the second renews, qualifies, or intensifies it. In poetry, diacope can imitate hesitation, longing, recollection, argument, or insistence. It also produces a woven musical effect, since the returning sound binds surrounding words together. By repeating without immediate duplication, the device balances continuity and variation in a line.
Example
Example in poetry:
Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be” places repeated words in a changed grammatical setting, creating a hinge of thought; In “The king is dead, long live the king,” king recurs after intervening words to mark succession; “We will remember—through winter’s bitter miles—we will remember” uses diacope to make persistence audible; Compare immediate repetition, “Never, never,” with diacope, where intervening material separates the repeated word
Additional Notes
Diacope creates a memorable return after a brief interruption, as in “the horror, the horror.” The inserted material can delay, qualify, or heighten the repeated word. It differs from epizeuxis, where repetition is immediate, and from anaphora, where repetition begins successive units.
Other Meanings of “Diacope”
Also Known As
Interrupted Repetition Repetition with Intervening Words Split Refrain Disjunct Repetition
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