Definition:
Similar sound endings to words, phrases, or sentences. See also: consonance
Etymology:
From the Greek, "like ending"Examples and Observations:
- ""My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands."
(Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona) - "Beanz Meanz Heinz."
(Heinz advertising slogan) - "The quicker picker upper."
(Bounty advertising slogan) - "That’s why, darling, it’s incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks I’m unforgettable too."
("Unforgettable," sung by Nat King Cole) - "Loose lips sink ships."
(public service ad during World War II) - "Crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery Butterfinger."
(advertising slogan for Butterfinger candy bar) - "Homoioteleuton is a series of words with similar endings such as those with the Latinate suffixes '-ion' (e.g., presentation, action, elaboration, interpretation), '-ence' (e.g., emergence), and '-ance' (e.g., resemblance, performance). These suffixes work to nominalize verbs (transform verbs into nouns) and tend to appear most regularly in what Williams (1990) referred to as the various '-eses' (idioms such as 'legalese' and 'bureaucratese.' Like other patterns of repetition, homoioteleuton helps to build or reinforce connections, as in this example from the English politician Lord Rosebery in an 1899 speech: 'Imperialism, sane imperialism . . . is nothing but this--a larger patriotism.'"
(James Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric, Sage, 2001) - "He would clap his hands, lick his lips, narrow his eyes into a squinty gaze and extemporize, patronize, chastise, sermonize and crack wise all at the same time."
(Linton Weeks, describing Donald Rumsfeld)
Pronunciation: ho-moi-o-te-LOO-ton
Also Known As: homeoteleuton, rhyme
