Definition:
The piling up of adjectives, often in the spirit of invective.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "collection"Examples:
- "He's a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-up-nose peacock."
(Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby) - "He was a gasping, wheezing, clutching, covetous old man."
(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol) - "Of all the bete, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on the human stage, that thing last night beat--as far as the story and acting went--and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsyturviest, tuneless, scrannelpipiest--tongs and boniest--doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, as far as its sound went."
(John Ruskin, on Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) - "One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb."
(Stephen Crane, "The Blue Hotel") - "Lipsmackin' thirstquenchin' acetastin' motivatin' goodbuzzin' cooltalkin' highwalkin' fastlivin' evergivin' coolfizzin' Pepsi."
(commercial slogan for Pepsi Cola) - "[Jimmy Carter] was of the Missionary lectern-pounding Amen ten-finger C-major-chord Sister-Martha-at-the-Yamaha-keyboard loblolly piney-woods Baptist faith . . .."
(Tom Wolfe, "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening")] - "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show"
(Geoffrey Nunberg, book title, 2006) - "The night-time sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, so-you-can-rest medicine."
(commercial slogan for NyQuil)
Pronunciation: si na TREES mus
Also Known As: congeries, accumulatio, seriation
