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Syllepsis

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

A figure in which a word applies to two others in different senses or to two others of which it grammatically suits only one.

Detailed Definition
Syllepsis is a rhetorical figure in which a single word governs or modifies two or more others in different, often incongruous, senses—such as “He lost his coat and his temper”—creating wit, surprise, or conceptual tension; in poetry, syllepsis exploits grammatical ambiguity to compress multiple meanings into one syntactic structure, as in Alexander Pope’s “Who shall decide, when doctors disagree, / And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?”
Example
Example in poetry:
Syllepsis: Alexander Pope: "She feeds me with her eyes, and starves me with her tongue"; Oscar Wilde: "He took his hat and his leave"; Shakespeare’s "Henry V": "He is a man of good repute, credit, and coy"; Contemporary: "She broke his car and his heart" (common usage in lyric poetry)
Additional Notes
Word governing two others differently (often literal/figurative). Example: "She stole my heart and my wallet." Creates wit through grammatical ambiguity. Related to zeugma.
Other Meanings of “Syllepsis”
Also Known As
Double meaning Zeugma variation Dual interpretation Grammatical pun Zeugma
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