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Figures of speech

Polysyndeton

Multiplying coordinating conjunctions, stretching the sentence into an ample or obsessive breath.

Polysyndeton repeats the conjunction before each coordinated element where usage would put only one: "and the rain, and the wind, and the falling night." The sentence advances in regular waves; each "and" relaunches the breath instead of closing it.

It can produce biblical amplitude, the exhaustion of an endless enumeration, or the childlike insistence of a piling voice. Hemingway made it a signature: his strings of "and" give the prose the regularity of a march. Like its inverse, asyndeton, it works through deviation from the norm — it is above all a figure of rhythm.

Example

"And the evening came, and the road climbed, and nobody spoke."

Put it into practice

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