polysyndeton

See also: Polysyndeton

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Medieval Latin polysyndeton, itself from Byzantine Greek πολυσύνδετον (polusúndeton, literally “many connected”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɒlɪˈsɪndɪtɒn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

Examples (rhetoric)
Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats […]

polysyndeton (countable and uncountable, plural polysyndetons or polysyndeta)

1. (rhetoric) The use of many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect in a sentence.
   • [1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, →OCLC, page 53:

     In Polysyndeton conjunctions flow,
     And every word its copulative will shew.]

   • 2002, Robert Baird Shuman, editor, Great American Writers: Twentieth Century, Marshall Cavendish, →ISBN, page 668:

     [Hemingway] often employs a variety of polysyndeton—a frequent use of conjunctions, most notably “and”—linking elements in a sentence together in a way that implies all parts are of equal importance, while in fact one unit of the series may be much more significant than the others.

Antonyms

• asyndeton

Translations

the use of many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect in a sentence

• French: polysyndète (fr) m
• Galician: polisíndeto (gl) m
• German: Polysyndeton (de) n
• Italian: polisindeto (it) m
• Polish: polisyndeton (pl) m
• Portuguese: polissíndeto (pt) m
• Spanish: polisíndeton (es) m
• Swedish: polysyndeton (sv), polysyndes (sv)
• Tagalog: damiugnay