Definition:
Repetition of words derived from the same root but with different endings.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "use of the same word in different cases"Examples:
- ". . . love is not love
Which alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove . . ."
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 116) - "Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
(Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi) - "Morality is moral only when it is voluntary."
(Lincoln Steffens) - "Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
(Robert Frost) - "By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself."
(Gustave Flaubert) - "Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it."
(Joseph Conrad) - "A good ad should be like a good sermon: it must not only comfort the afflicted; it also must afflict the comfortable."
(Bernice Fitzgibbon) - "Friendly Americans win American friends."
(slogan of the United States Travel Service in the 1960s) - "Choosy Mothers Choose Jif"
(commercial slogan for Jif peanut butter) - "I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."
(George W. Bush, April 2006) - "But here's my point: either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know?"
(George W. Bush, 13 February 2007) - "Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment."
(Norman Mailer) - "You can't keep blaming yourself. Blame yourself once, then move on."
(Homer Simpson)
Pronunciation: po-LIP-ti-tun
