Home › Glossary › Letter D

Distributio

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

A rhetorical device addressing successive parts of a whole—such as body parts, seasons, or virtues—in sequence to build cumulative emotional or logical force.

Detailed Definition
Distributio is a rhetorical scheme that itemizes parts of a whole to clarify or emphasize structure (e.g., “government of the people, by the people, for the people”); in poetry, distributio organizes complex ideas through enumeration, as in Whitman’s catalogs or the triadic stanzas of biblical poetry, where listing becomes a method of inclusion, praise, or analytical dissection.
Example
Example in poetry:
Rhetorical distribution: “Some say love, some say war, some say art”; Cicero’s forensic lists; Shakespeare’s “Some are born great…”; Modern: Claudia Rankine’s catalogues of microaggressions
Additional Notes
Rhetorical division or distribution of subject into parts. Creates organized enumeration. Related to partitio and merismus. Common in descriptive and argumentative verse. Provides structural clarity.
Also Known As
Distribution Apportionment Division rhetoric
Skip to main content