paronomasia
- noun
- /ˌpærəˈnoʊmeɪziə/
- Literature
:
paronomasia
- In her speech, she skillfully employed paronomasia to engage the listeners with playful language.
Examples
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Cotton defines paronomasia as "the repetition of like sounds, yet somewhat differing" (Kibbey 13).
Academic text (1997) -
For him, paronomasia includes repetitions not only of complete words but also of letters and syllables.
Academic text (1997) -
Like Cotton, Emerson employs paronomasia to convert his readers.
Academic text (1997) -
Whether Banquo as a "banquet" is a true diaphora here, the repetition certainly offers a good paronomasia approximating that figure.
Academic text (1997) -
In the "eyeball" passage, beginning with "Standing on the bare ground" and ending with "part or particle of God," Emerson employs paronomasia to reify the relationship between matter and spirit, particularly between the visionary's "I" and "eye" and "Universal Being."
Academic text (1997) -
The comedian's use of paronomasia made the audience laugh at the clever puns.
-
The writer's talent for paronomasia transformed ordinary phrases into memorable jokes.
Synonyms
89
4.8
A joke that uses the different meanings of a word or words that sound the same
14
6.0
Clever or funny use of words often with puns
1
7.0
Making jokes by using words that mean more than one thing or sound alike
How Playful
Surface Forms
Etymology
Paronomasia comes from Greek parts para- ('beside') and onoma ('name'), so it originally meant placing names or words side by side. So paronomasia is a fancy word for a 'pun', meaning you put words that sound alike next to each other to make a joke or a strong effect.