Search the Dictionary

word play; hence, skill in debate and repartee. See Fencing. Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric, That hath so well been taught her dazzing fence. Milton. Of dauntless courage and consummate skill in fence. Macaulay.

Embellished with flowers of rhetoric; enriched to excess with figures; excessively ornate; as, a florid style; florid eloquence.

To use florid language; to indulge in rhetorical figures and lofty expressions; to be flowery. They dilate . . . and flourish long on little incidents. J. Watts.

iscussion and debate; used in legal proceedings, or in public discussions; argumentative; rhetorical; as, forensic eloquence or disputes. Forensic medicine, medical jurisprudence; medicine in its relations to law.

Any empty, senseless show of wit or eloquence; rhetoric without thought. Johnson. It was a long speech, but all froth. L'Estrange.

The branches of polite or elegant learning; as language, rhetoric, poetry, and the ancient classics; belles-letters.

ost all of them extravagant hyperboles. Blair. Somebody has said of the boldest figure in rhetoric, the hyperbole, that it lies without deceiving. Macaulay.

Rhetorical decoration in writing or speaking; vivid descriptions presenting or suggesting images of sensible objects; figures in discourse. I wish there may be in this poem any instance of good imagery. Dryden.

Characterized by imagination; imaginative; also, given to the use or rhetorical figures or imagins.

To introduce artfully; to infuse gently; to instill. All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment. Locke. Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the seve…

Poet laureate. (b) One who received an honorable degree in grammar, including poetry and rhetoric, at the English universities; -- so called as being presented with a wreath of laurel. [Obs.] (b) Formerly, an officer of the king's household, whose business was to compose an ode annually for the king's birthday, and ot…

ed to excite laughter, without scorn or contempt; sportive. Broome. A chapter upon German rhetoric would be in the same ludicrous predicament as Van Troil's chapter on the snakes of Iceland, which delivers its business in one summary sentence, announcing, that snakes in Iceland -- there are none. De Quincey.…

Of or pertaining to an orator or to oratory; characterized by oratory; rhetorical; becoming to an orator; as, an oratorical triumph; an oratorical essay. -- Or`a*tor"ic*al*ly, adv.

an orator; the art of public speaking in an eloquent or effective manner; the exercise of rhetorical skill in oral discourse; eloquence. "The oratory of Greece and Rome." Milton. When a world of men Could not prevail with all their oratory. Shak.

Finely finished, as a style of composition. A graceful and ornate rhetoric. Milton.

ce, fear, etc.; a passion for war, or for drink; an orator should have passion as well as rhetorical skill. "A passion fond even to idolatry." Macaulay. "Her passion is to seek roses." Lady M. W. Montagu. We also are men of like passions with you. Acts xiv. 15. The nature of the human mind can not be sufficiently under…

A permitted choice; a rhetorical figure in which a thing is committed to the decision of one's opponent. [Obs.] Milton.

e clearness of a picture; as, a pictorial dictionary; a pictorial imagination. "Pictorial rhetoric." Ruskin. -- Pic*to"ri*al*ly, adv.

r accouterments. Shak. Thus he grew up, in logic point-devise, Perfect in grammar, and in rhetoric nice. Longfellow.

To speak or utter rhetorically; to deliver; to recite; as, to pronounce an oration. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you. Shak.