Definition:
A series of four members, usually in parallel form.
Etymology:
From the Greek, four limbsExamples and Observations:
- "I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
(Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, May 13, 1940) - "I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope that it may do some good."
(James Thurber, Letter to E.B. White, April 24, 1951) - "I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap."
(John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley) - "Out of its wild disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the final splendor. And buried in the familiar boasts of its advance agents lies the modesty of most of its people."
(E.B. White, "The Ring of Time") - "The same government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education."
(Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," April 12, 1964) - "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly, and applying unsuitable remedies."
(Groucho Marx) - "In the anti-math of writing, the number three is greater than four. The mojo of three offers a greater sense of completeness than four or more."
(Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools, Little, Brown and Company, 2006)
Pronunciation: TET-ra-KOL-un cli-max
