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Gongylism

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

Elaborate, ornate poetic style emphasizing artifice over naturalness

Detailed Definition
Gongylism is a rare rhetorical term denoting excessive or affected refinement in diction, often pejoratively used to describe overly ornate or precious language; in poetic critique, it warns against stylistic indulgence that obscures meaning or emotion, though some movements (e.g., Aestheticism) embrace such “gongylism” as deliberate artifice—highlighting the tension between clarity and decoration in poetic style.
Example
Example in poetry:
Obscure wordplay for elite audiences; Example: “Ultracrepidarian sesquipedalianism”; Rare in English; More common in Renaissance Latin poetry; Gongylism prioritizes erudition over clarity
Additional Notes
Extreme roundness or circular form in prose style. Rare term. Related to rotund, swelling rhetoric. Related: ornate style, periodic sentence. Study: when circularity enhances vs. confuses.
Also Known As
ornate style artificial elegance
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