Meaning of adynaton | Babel Free

Definitions

A form of hyperbole that uses exaggeration so magnified as to express impossibility; an instance of such hyperbole.

countable, rhetoric, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“In this little book, Dr. Sharp attempts to revive and to explain⟳ a great number⟳ of hard words which were formerly employed by teachers of rhetoric: presenting chapters intituled after the figures, Acyrologia, Adynaton, Anadiplosis, [...]”

“In the realm of a very exclusive art adynata of this type⟳ and others are taken up again by Arnaut Daniel, the great and distant master of Dante [Alighieri].”

“Stanza 12 is notable for its use⟳ of the topos of the exhausted poet whose skills and techniques are fading fast and which cannot do justice to either his beloved or his love⟳ for her. This is ironic after the elaborate adynatons.”

“As a final sample of this little genre, which we may call⟳ the one-line paraphrase of rien, there is this rather brutal adynaton of the surrealist Jean-Pierre Duprey: "Vide ton creux," which Graham Dunstan Martin translates as "pour⟳ out your vacuum."”

“This transcendence is very evident in adynatons which pervade Igbo folklore.”

“[William] Shakespeare's use⟳ of adynaton is central to an understanding of [The Rape of] Lucrece. On the one hand, this text explores a need⟳ for communication that functions on the basis that language is adequate to move⟳ private griefs into public action; on the other hand, it comments ironically on the impossibility of that ever being achieved. [...] Adynaton, then, is not only particularly attuned to what can, or rather cannot, be said in any given context, but can also offer⟳ the careful reader a critique of the very language being used and expose the limitations of that language.”

CEFR level