Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- In ancient prosody, noting a hexameter in which each succeeding word contains one syllable more than that preceding it. Also spelled
ropalic .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Pros.) Applied to a line or verse in which each successive word has one more syllable than the preceding.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Having each
successive word longer by aletter orsyllable .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Week 852, reverse rhopalic sentences: Fundraiser announced; Johnsons mistype invite, offer "cash bra."
Report from Week 894 Post 2010
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Week 848, rhopalic sentences, in which each successive word is one letter longer: So Joe, only you're having trouble spelling Murkowski.
Report from Week 894 Post 2010
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Merciful, too, are the Glossary (for words like rhopalic) and the appendix of solutions and answers.
oroboros commented on the word rhopalic
See snowball word.
May 23, 2008
bananniethree commented on the word rhopalic
OED: "Applied to verses in which each word contains one syllable more than the one immediately preceding it."
April 13, 2009
seanahan commented on the word rhopalic
World Wide Words says "The classic example of the latter form was created by Dmitri Borgmann: “I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing in-decipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications’ incompre-hensibleness�?".
April 13, 2009
oroboros commented on the word rhopalic
Another of Borgmann's snowballs:
I am not very happy acting pleased whenever prominent scientists overmagnify intellectual enlightenment, stoutheartedly outvociferating ultrareactionary retrogressionists, characteristically unsupernaturalizing transubstantiatively philosophicoreligious incomprehensiblenesses anthropomorphologically. Pathologicopsychological!
May 17, 2009
quandary commented on the word rhopalic
Love the Borgman examples!
I've become addicted to rhopalic sentences recently and have created a page about them here, at my Quadrivial Quandary site.
This is one of mine:
I do not like these greedy phrases, rhopalic fashioned, tirelessly snowballing, accumulating incrementally sesquipedalian overindulgences, circumlocutional complexifications, pseudo-aristocratic self-aggrandizements, psychopathalogically over-intellectualizing incomprehensiblenesses; hyperpolysyllabicomania!
December 10, 2009