Word.ws English Dictionary

ecphrasis

ecphrasis is the alternative spelling of ekphrasis.

Meaning of ekphrasis

Noun

ekphrasis (countable and uncountable, plural ekphrases)

  1. (rhetoric) A clear, intense, self-contained argument or verbal description of an object, especially of an artwork.
    • One [trope] is ekphrasis, the literary description of a work of art, the most famous example of which may be the careful depiction of the shield of Achilles in book 18 of the Iliad.2004, Daniel Donoghue, Old English Literature, Blackwell, published 2004, page 75

Forms of ecphrasis

pluralecphrases

Questions about ecphrasis

What is ecphrasis the alternative spelling of?
Ecphrasis is the alternative spelling of ekphrasis.

Words near ecphrasis in the dictionary

  1. ecphorizing
  2. ecphory
  3. ecphractic
  4. ecphractics
  5. ecphrases
  6. ecphrasis
  7. ecphrastic
  8. ECPI
  9. ECPM
  10. ECPP
  11. ECPs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ecphrasis (page history and authors); ekphrasis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ecphrasis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ecphrasis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.