Gorgianic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing a highly ornate oratorical style marked by balanced clauses, antithesis and rhythmic parallelism, as practiced by the ancient sophist Gorgias
2. Relating to the elaborate, figurative prose style of the Greek rhetorician Gorgias, with its symmetrical phrasing and sharp contrasts
3. Characterizing a showy manner of public speaking built on matched phrases and balanced opposites, in the tradition of the sophist Gorgias

Etymology: Gorgias of Leontini, a Sicilian teacher of rhetoric who worked in Athens, became famous for a style in which sentences were built like mirrors. He set clauses of matching length and rhythm against one another, often pairing opposites so that each half answered the other. Ancient critics noticed the effect and gave its devices names, and the balance became his signature. The adjective is simply his name with the suffix "-ic" attached, the same way "Platonic" comes from Plato. A sentence described as gorgianic is one whose phrases match in size and sound, so that a reader hears a pattern before hearing the point.