Word of the Day:
zeugma
What It Means
The act of using a word, particularly an adjective or verb, to apply to more than one noun when its sense is appropriate to only one.
Zeugma in Context
“Thus I would describe 'He took his leave and the wrong umbrella' as zeugma, but not 'He took his hat and umbrella'. Zeugma is an important element in Chaucer's poetic technique, not because he uses it, but because he so regularly turns it down.”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from Ancient Greek ζεῦγμα (zeûgma, “yoking; a bond, a band”), from ζεύγνυμι (zeúgnumi, “to yoke; to join”), from ζεῦγος (zeûgos, “a yoke”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: zeugma (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “zeugma.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zeugma. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.