Vocabulary Word
Word: rhetoric
Definition: art of effective communication; art of using language effectively and persuasively; style of speaking or writing; grandiloquent language; Ex. political rhetoric; ADJ. rhetorical; CF. rhetorical question: question to which no answer is expected as ``Who knows it ?''
Definition: art of effective communication; art of using language effectively and persuasively; style of speaking or writing; grandiloquent language; Ex. political rhetoric; ADJ. rhetorical; CF. rhetorical question: question to which no answer is expected as ``Who knows it ?''
Sentences Containing 'rhetoric'
What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study.
I understand this to be the number whom he taught at one time, or who attended what we would call one course of lectures; a number which will not appear extraordinary from so great a city to so famous a teacher, who taught, too, what was at that time the most fashionable of all sciences, rhetoric.
The demand for philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place.
As the demand increased, the school, both of philosophy and rhetoric, became stationary, first in Athens, and afterwards in several other cities.
And that I gave over the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of elegant neat language.
That I was no great proficient in the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of other faculties, which perchance I might have dwelt upon, if I had found myself to go on in them with success.
Remember, that that which sets a man at work, and hath power over the affections to draw them either one way, or the other way, is not any external thing properly, but that which is hidden within every man's dogmata, and opinions: That, that is rhetoric; that is life; that (to speak true) is man himself.
Besides, no one will trouble himself to verify whether you have followed them or whether you have not, being no way concerned in it; especially as, if I mistake not, this book of yours has no need of any one of those things you say it wants, for it is, from beginning to end, an attack upon the books of chivalry, of which Aristotle never dreamt, nor St. Basil said a word, nor Cicero had any knowledge; nor do the niceties of truth nor the observations of astrology come within the range of its fanciful vagaries; nor have geometrical measurements or refutations of the arguments used in rhetoric anything to do with it; nor does it mean to preach to anybody, mixing up things human and divine, a sort of motley in which no Christian understanding should dress itself.
The landlord, to get him out of the inn, replied with no less rhetoric though with shorter words, and without calling upon him to pay the reckoning let him go with a Godspeed.
This point of view we should endeavour to reach, and reserve the flowers of rhetoric for subjects which are more adapted to them.
Were this all, there were no hurt in it, and the whole might terminate in a jest; but the mischief ends not here, they corrupt our youth, especially our men-servants; oaths and impudence are their only flowers of rhetoric; gaming and thieving are the principal parts of their profession; japanning but the pretence.
More Vocab Words
::: bauble - trinket; cheap jewel; trifle::: intoxicate - make drunk; stimulate or excite; Ex. intoxicated by all the money he might win
::: fictitious - imaginary; non-existent; purposely invented to deceive; untrue; Ex. fictitious name/boyfriend; CF. fictional
::: delusion - false belief; hallucination; deluding; Ex. delusions of grandeur; Ex. under the delusion that
::: bewitch - cast a spell over; captivate completely
::: anticlimax - letdown in thought or emotion; something unexciting, ordinary, or disappointing coming after something important or exciting
::: arboretum - place where different trees and shrubs are studied and exhibited
::: glaring - (of something bad) highly conspicuous; harshly bright; shining intensely and blindingly
::: hierarchy - arrangement by rank or standing; authoritarian body divided into ranks; body of persons having authority
::: exquisite - delicate; very finely made; extremely beautiful; Ex. exquisite piece of jewelry
