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Epizeuxis

Device
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

The immediate, emphatic repetition of a word (“Never, never, never!”) for emotional intensity, urgency, or dramatic emphasis.

Detailed Definition
Epizeuxis is the immediate, unmediated repetition of a word for intense emotional effect (“Never, never, never!”); in poetry, it conveys urgency, trauma, or ecstasy by stripping away syntactic buffer, creating raw emphasis that bypasses rational discourse to strike directly at feeling or sensory immediacy.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Never, never, never” (Churchill); “Alone, alone, all, all alone” (Coleridge); “No, no, no” in Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”; Epizeuxis intensifies emotion through immediate repetition.
Additional Notes
Immediate repetition of word for emphasis. "Words, words, words." Intensification device. Differs from: anaphora (starts lines), epimone (insistence). Simple but powerful. Related: repetition schemes.
Other Meanings of “Epizeuxis”
Also Known As
Immediate repetition vehement repetition
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