Meaning of rhetorical in English
Table of contents
Pronunciation
/rəˈtɔrək(ə)l/US accent
UK accent
to browse different examples of pronunciation.Qualitative Adjective
rhetoricalEtymology
late Middle English (first used in the sense ‘eloquently expressed’): via Latin from Greek rhētorikos (from rhētor‘rhetor’) + -alDefinitions
1. of or relating to rhetoricExamples
- « accepted two or three verbal and rhetorical changes I suggested- W.A.White »
- « the rhetorical sin of the meaningless variation- Lewis Mumford »
- 2. concerned with effect or style of writing and speaking
Examples
- « a rhetorical question is one asked solely to produce an effect (especially to make an assertion) rather than to elicit a reply »
Synonyms
- anapestic
- anapaestic
- bombastic
- declamatory
- large
- orotund
- tumid
- turgid
- flowery
- ornate
- forensic
- grandiloquent
- magniloquent
- tall
- oratorical
- stylistic
- embellished
- empurpled
- over-embellished
- purple
- poetic
- poetical
Antonyms
Famous quotes
- « Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers. » Amy Waldman
- « That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact. » Walter Pater
- « Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth. » George Santayana
- « The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry? » Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel