Today’s Word of the Day comes straight from your high school English class…. and also from Merriam Webster’s Dictionary:
alliteration
Definition of alliteration
: the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables (such as “wild and woolly,” “threatening throngs.” etc.)
— also called “head rhyme” or “initial rhyme,” though neither of those terms is, um, well…. actually alliterative. <Ahem!>
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In alliteration, consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables are repeated. The repeated sounds are usually the first, or initial, sounds—as in “seven sisters”—but repetition of sounds in non-initial stressed, or accented, syllables is also common: “appear and report.”
Alliteration is a common feature in poetry, but it is also found in songs and raps and speeches and other kinds of writing, as well as in frequently used phrases, such as “pretty as a picture” and “dead as a doornail.”
Alliteration can, in its simplest form, reinforce one or two consonant sounds, as in this line from a Shakespeare Sonnet:
When I do count the clock that tells the time
A more complex pattern of alliteration can be created when consonants both at the beginning of words, and at the beginning of stressed syllables within words, are repeated. Note the following from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples”:
The City’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s
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See how many examples of alliteration you can find in the “About DEW” tab of this blog. Extra credit if you can identify every one of the 4H ‘s. And no, “4H” here does not refer to Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. <Nice try, though.>
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Your Bonus Word of the Day, also from the dictionary, is “onomatopoeia.” <Just because I happen to like it!>
onomatopoeia
Definition of onomatopoeia
“Bowwow?” Holy cow! Just gotta love it!