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