Anastrophe is the Enemy! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Yoda from "Star Wars"

"Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you." Ugh. When you use an an anastrophe, you flip the expected order between subject, verb, and object. In that sentence, you could easily write "You've become powerful, I sense the dark side in you." It's an interesting approach to English syntax since it's not wrong per se, but it does change emphasis and goes against the grain of what we accept as typical. Yoda does this all the time, as though he lives in some poetic verse (far, far away) but doing this in day-to-day speech is both uncommon and pretentious. Master orators like Winston Churchill used anastrophe in speeches, and other orientations of subject, verb, and object are seen in other languages, but egads...

Answer: "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..."

It was all of that and it was anaphora, a rhetorical device used to get something into your head! Perhaps this is the real enemy. Perhaps we should do away with authors or speakers needing to tell us things over and over again to get a point across. Perhaps we should dodge it altogether or, else, fear slipping into a severe case of hypozeuxis, where entire full clauses become repeated sentence after sentence. Dickens, writing in the Victorian Era, was paid by the word, so it's likely just a case of him scraping for a bit more cash...but way to set a precedent, man.

Answer: A literary character

Tom Swift first started appearing in young adult novels as far back as the 1910s and his adventures often involved a scientific or space exploration theme-- think 'Hardy Boys in Space'. The tendency in these books was for the author, originally Howard Roger Garis under the pseudonym Victor Appleton, to use adverbs or synonyms to spice up verbs used to describe dialogue, so in the stories, it was rare for someone to have simply 'said' something; they would say it swiftly or calmly or with regret or they would stammer or croak or warble.

A Tom Swiftly occurs when you take a piece of dialogue and ensure someone says it in a way that evokes a clever pun when you read it, like "'I have no flowers,' Tom said lackadaisically." Har har. Let me tell you-- this can't be taken seriously.

Answer: Asyndeton

Let's break this down a bit, as this is actually an interesting term. 'Syndeton' is Greek, and it means 'to bind together'-- think of the word 'synergy' or 'synthesis', it's about bringing things together to form a bigger whole'. Now with syndeton in grammar, you join different parts of a sentence together, usually with conjunctions like 'and' or 'or' or 'with', etc. So when you say "Let's go for dinner and a movie", there's syndeton there; you're linking parts of a sentence (ie. 'Let's go', 'dinner', 'a movie') together to form a cohesive sentence. 'Poly-' is the prefix for 'many', so like in a Cormac McCarthy novel (like "No Country For Old Men"), you get long passages of descriptive events, usually strung together with 'and' to create run-ons for days.

But it's for effect, keep in mind; the long descriptions of "No Country For Old Men" evoke a certain quality and atmosphere for characters in Southern Texas. 'Asyndeton' is the opposite; it's about making text memorable and snappy without conjunctions. "Vidi, veni, vici", for instance, conveys a lot, but without the need to conjunctions. "Vidi, veni, and vici" just doesn't have the same resonance.

Answer: Slurpee

7-Eleven hit the nail on the head with the Slurpee naming idea since the idea of onomatopoeia is to evoke the sound of whatever you happen to be engaging with, so when you use a word like 'buzz' or 'pop' or 'woosh', you're actively describing the very thing you're saying. So when a company uses an onomatopoeic brand name, they're automatically getting a foot in the door with their marketing-- a Slurpee is meant to be slurped; Pop Rocks are meant to pop in your mouth; a Crunchy bar is meant to make that noise when you bite into it.

It's also great for brand retention. Think about 'Rice Krispies' as a cereal, and think about the noises they make when you pour milk on them. It's obvious why they named their mascots 'Snap, Crackle, and Pop'.

Insidious, isn't it?

Answer: Soviet Russia

This classic 'Soviet Reversal' joke has been told by a number of different people over the years but has appeared in animated TV shows like "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" as well, and it always goes the same-- in America, you do something, but in Soviet Russia, the reverse happens. With antanaclasis, this flip occurs, but oftentimes, it's done with a pun inserted since you change the meaning of the verb, for instance, to give it a double meaning.

The phrase "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" is a great example of this since, in the first half, time 'flies' straight ahead, metaphorically, while in the second half, fruit 'flies', literally, like fruit does. If only there were an easier way, am I right?

Answer: The Bible

Adynaton, quite simply, is 'hyperbole to an impossible extreme'. When someone says that something will only happen "when pigs fly", that's adynaton. And it's not meant to be taken too seriously either. In the way of rhetorical devices, it's one that pushes the limits of tact. Sure, you get a point across, but it's meant to be unbelievable.

The Biblical quote in the question is a good example of this; a camel can't literally fit through the eye of a needle, but it emphasizes the sheer impossibility of the task at hand.

Answer: Purple

Purple prose occurs when you decide that your writing isn't 'deep enough', so you decide to inflate what you're creating with unnecessary excess. The term was coined in poetry by Ancient Roman poet Horace, known for his collected verses, but since then it's been used to knock art students down a peg, allowing for a kind method of critique with which one can say "this is just a bit too much" or "I honestly can't make sense of what you're trying to say because your paper doesn't make sense, Nicole. You're a fine arts major and somehow you got the grades to get into university. Pare it down." No, I honestly don't have any stories to tell about purple prose.

Answer: Same Letter

Tautogram derives from Greek for 'same letter', so you could just as easily call that "Wheel of Fortune" category 'Tautogram' and call it a day.
"But Kyle," you ask, "why don't you just call it alliteration, you nincompoop?" First off, OUCH. Second off, there's a difference, and four years of university can tell you that tautogram is the ideal word for "Wheel of Fortune" because you're seeing the repetitive first letters. Read it with me: Sally Saw SeaShells Somewhere Sunny. That's a tautogram. Now say it out loud.
Did you do it? HA! That's alliteration. When you say it out, like you would a verse of poetry, then that's alliterative. Yes, it can be both.
Literary devices are making us argue. Can't you see? This is what they want.

Answer: Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss was a master of nonsense but, to his credit, his words were evocative, especially for children, and to a large extent his created, non-existent descriptors were synaesthetic. You can almost picture what a truffula tree is, can't you? Or what it's like to find a snergelly hose? Often, Seuss would incorporate made-up words to create proper rhymes, but sometimes they were just added for effect. That said, many of his stories were much more grounded (word-wise), containing basic vocabulary and nothing you'll never use again. Nonsense words have also been used in the past by authors like Lewis Carroll, A. A. Milne, and Roald Dahl.