Diacope

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A rhetorical device characterized by the repetition of a word or phrase with one or more words in between, emphasizing a particular idea or sentiment
2. A literary technique involving the recurrence of a specific term or expression with intervening elements, enhancing its impact and meaning
3. A form of repetition where a word or phrase appears again in a sentence, separated by other words, to create rhythm and emphasis

Etymology: Diacope is a rhetorical term for repeating a word with a gap in between, as in "Friends, Romans, countrymen" style repetition of "love" with intervening words. The Greek word diakopē meant "gash" or "cleft," a literal cutting-through. Rhetoricians applied that image to a phrase split open by intervening words, the way a wound or fissure splits a surface. The Greek is built from dia, "through, across," and kopē, "cutting," the same root that gives English words such as "-cide" forms like "homicide" and the verb "to chop" in related Greek vocabulary. The sense of a cut that separates two parts of something is what the rhetorical use inherits: the repeated word is the two edges of the cut, and the intervening material is the gap. The term was borrowed into Late Latin as diacopē and reached English as a learned borrowing, so it belongs to the technical vocabulary of classical rhetoric rather than everyday speech.

Synonyms: repetition, epizeuxis, anaphora, refrain, echo