I’ve almost finished Filloy’s Caterva (see this post), and I’ll be reviewing it soon, but at the moment I’m focused on a word that was new to me and that I originally thought must be a misprint. On p. 368 of my paperback edition I read the sentence “Death is an epiphonema” and thought “epiphenomenon” must be intended (the book is far from free of typos), but on investigation I discovered that it’s a real word. Wiktionary defines it as “(rhetoric) An exclamation or reflection used to summarise or round off an argument or discourse” and says it’s “From Latin epiphonema, from Ancient Greek ἐπιφώνημα (epiphṓnēma), from ἐπιφωνείν (epiphōneín, ‘call to’)”; the pronunciation is, as one would expect, /ˌɛpɪfəˈniːmə/. The OED (entry from 1891) has the following first and last cites:
1579 Such end, is an Epiphonema, or rather the moral of the whole tale.
E. K. in E. Spenser, Shepheardes Calender May 304 Gloss.
[…]
1870 The epiphonema to the daughters of Jerusalem has a subordinate significance as a refrain.
W. H. Green, translation of O. Zöckler, Song of Solomon 75/2 in P. Schaff et al., translation of J. P. Lange et al. Comm. Holy Script.: O. T. vol. X
Is anyone familiar with this recondite word?
On how Tristram Shandy was named:
(Cribbed from Gutenberg to save typing it again. “He” is Tristram’s father.)
Well then, I’ve certainly encountered the word before, because I read Tristram Shandy back in college and have dipped into it off and on since then, but there’s so much weirdness and magniloquence there that I was overwhelmed and didn’t notice it.
I didn’t know the word, but I find Hermann Menge’s famous Repetitorium der lateinischen Syntax und Stilistik has a whole paragraph on Epiphonem. There was a time when every German student of Latin philology in Germany had a copy of Menge’s book (basically a University level grammar of Latin in questions and answers).
Not familiar, I had to look this up, but somewhere along the way I made a study of the rhetorical devices used in the Aeolus chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, into which he crammed every figure of speech he possibly could.
In the section headed “The Grandeur that was Rome,” professor MacHugh says, speaking of the Romans: “What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset.”
That last line “He gazed…watercloset” constitutes a “parodic example of the rhetorical epiphonema, an epigram that sums up what the orator has previously said” according to an annotator at the Joyce Project.
And a fine and fetid example it is!
I can’t get “Girl from Epiphonema” out of my head now.
“ And a fine and fetid example it is! “
“I can’t get “Girl from Epiphonema” out of my head now.”
And it comes full circle:
“ The name Ipanema originally referred to a river in the state of São Paulo, its etymology deriving from the Tupi language words ipá (pond) and nem-a (stinking).[1] Possible translations for its original meaning are “worthless water”, “stinking lake”, “turbid water”, or “water worthless for human consumption”.[2] The historian Teodoro Sampaio translated Ipanema as “bad water”.”
Unterstinkenbrunn.
When I saw the word epiphonema I thought it meant a linguistic mean outside of the phonological system, like a facial expression, gesture, or a telling pause.
o, to hear the noble romans again welcoming the sun with the melodious sounds of the epiphone!
This paper on Hakluyt, who claimed a double epiphonema, finds several uses of the word earlier than the first OED quotation. They used EEBO, so I imagine the OED will find them, too, when they get to revising it.
Great find! Here’s the “double epiphonema” sentence:
So this bizarre construction is at least this old…
It was common from the late 16th century on, e.g. “TO THE RIGHT honorable , the Lorde MAIOR , OF THE CITIE OF London” (1583).
I disagree with Professor MacHugh. The provision of sewers and water closets was far more important for the development of modern society than erecting statues of deities.
I didn’t know the word either, but I’d read George’s Perec’s little book “Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour?”, which also uses every rhetorical device he can fit in, all listed in the index. So I checked, and “epiphonème” takes me to the last paragraph (spoiler alert):
Alors Pollak Henri et nous autres, on s’en est revenu sur la route versaillaise. On a repris le train jusques aux Invalides. On s’est partagé les bouquins, les cigarettes, les chocolats. On est allé boire un pot à la terrasse du Select et on a vidé la bouteille de whisky. Et puis chacun est rentré chez soi. Et plus jamais on n’a entendu parler de ce mauvais coucheur.
Ah, with a comma (as I sort of suspected). Now it makes sense: “the right honorable [one], [namely] the Lord”…
Interesting to see that both sources have honorable without u.
I’ve always felt that while -our is a perfectly good adaptation of French -eur, the Brits do overstep a bit by using it where even French has -or-.
-our never was an adaptation of Central French -eur (as found today in honneur), it was a copy of northern French -our back when French was full of diphthongs… apparently these 16th-century printers reverse-engineered it to Latin -or, the same thing they did to debt and doubt (French dette, doute, Latin debitum, dubitum).
And of course amour used to be ameur; see the LH discussion starting here.