Word.ws English Dictionary

zeugmata

zeugmata is the plural of zeugma.

Meaning of zeugma

Noun

zeugma (countable and uncountable, plural zeugmata or zeugmas)

  1. (rhetoric) 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.
  2. (rhetoric) Syllepsis.
    • The existence of zeugmas suggests the rule of transitivity. Zeugmas appear incorrect because they embody an allegedly univocal use of a term in a way which violated^([sic]) the rule of transitivity.July 1963, Fred Sommers, “Types and Ontology”, in The Philosophical Review, volume LXXII, Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in Philosophy, page 343

Questions about zeugmata

What is zeugmata the plural of?
Zeugmata is the plural of zeugma.

Words near zeugmata in the dictionary

  1. zeuglodont
  2. zeuglodontoid
  3. zeuglodonts
  4. zeugma
  5. zeugmas
  6. zeugmata
  7. zeugmatic
  8. zeugmatical
  9. zeugmatically
  10. zeugmatogram
  11. zeugmatograms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: zeugmata (page history and authors); zeugma (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: “zeugmata.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zeugmata. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.