Thursday word: rhopalic

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

rhopalic (roh-PAL-ik) - adj., of a text, having each successive unit one element larger than the previous.


Most commonly applied to a line of verse where each word is one syllable larger than the previous, but can also be, of stanzas, having each successive line one syllable or metrical foot longer, or of prose, having each successive word one letter longer:

I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.

As constructed by Dmitri Borgmann. In poetry, sometimes also called wedge verse or snowball verse. Adopted from Ancient Greek, because among the ancient Greeks poetry was a Thing: a rhopalos was a club or cudgel thicker on one end than the other.

---L.

Comments

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

Love that last paragraph answering the very question that I was going to ask about this word, also, of course, excellent choice of word. Rap contests can be rather rhopalic and it would be amusing to see what they'd do with that very word!