Auxesis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A figure of speech in which emphasis is created through a gradual increase in the intensity or significance of successive phrases or clauses
2. a rhetorical device employing progressively stronger or more emphatic language to build intensity and impact through successive expressions
3. a stylistic technique that amplifies meaning by arranging words or phrases in order of increasing force or importance

Etymology: In ancient Greek, "auxesis" meant simply "growth" or "increase," and it comes from "auxanō," "to grow." Rhetoricians borrowed the word to name a figure of speech in which a speaker builds emphasis by arranging phrases or clauses so that each one carries more weight than the last, climbing toward a climax. The idea of growth is literal in the technique: the sentence swells step by step rather than stating its point all at once. The word reached English as a technical term of classical rhetoric, carried over from Greek without any change in its core sense. Its meaning in English stays close to its origin, so a reader meeting it for the first time can recover the idea from the word's history alone: the figure is a kind of verbal growth.