Zeugma: rhetorical technique used by master writers

What is a Zeugma? Zeugma is a rhetorical device in which a single word is made to refer to two or more words in a sentence, often playing on the literal and metaphorical meanings of the words.

Grinning a crooked smile that did little to hide his crooked intentions and crooked teeth, he said ‘Trust me.

The verb ‘Hide’ controls two other words: intentions and teeth. But what is noteworthy in this zeugma is the juxtaposition of an abstract noun (intentions) to a concrete one (teeth).

Now, however, laziness triumphs over diligence, idleness over work, vice over virtue, pride over courage, and theory over the practice of weapons that lived and shone only in the Golden Age and in the time of the knights errant (Cervantes 465).

And the verb ‘find’:

I found her enchanted, transformed from princess to peasant, from beautiful to ugly, from angel to devil, from fragrant to smelly, from well spoken to rustic, from serene to scary, from light to dark, and finally from Dulcinea de Toboso to a low-born peasant from Sayago (Cervantes 671).

With this simple resource, Cervantes adds delight and color to the narrative – through antithesis – while cultivating the reader’s attention, forcing him to add two and two to capture the intended meaning.

Zeugma used in a humorous vein:

Lenox said, “Hog, the only thing you save is your breath when you eat.” After two failed marriages, I find myself keeping my guard up, along with my boxer shorts (Grafton, C is for Corpse 15).

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, we note Portia’s cheeky speech: How strangely it fits [outfitted]! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round leggings in France, his hood in Germany, and his demeanor everywhere. (Act I, scene ii, line 72-72).

Zeugma used to set the tone for a book, as in The Vicar of Wakefield:

For this reason, I had barely received orders a year before I began to seriously think about marriage, and I chose my wife as she chose her wedding dress, not because of a fine, shiny surface, but because of the qualities that would look good (Goldsmith 4 ).

Zeugma in dialogue:

“Eliot, Michael’s premature departure leaves a space for us both in our home and in our hearts” (Segal 112). “To our beloved new leader Jason Gilbert, racket ace and ass matchless. May his shots on the court land as often as his shorts on the bed” (Segal 143).

The dominant word can be both a noun and a verb, as we see in the following examples from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, where the dominant word is the noun ‘hand’:

“Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed rail and twice as hard (7)” and the controlling word is the verb ‘lost’ in the following example:

“Mrs. Radley had been beautiful until she married Mr. Radley and lost all her money. She also lost most of her teeth, her hair, and her right index finger (Dill’s contribution) (39).”

From the above examples we infer that zeugmas can be used to give the narrative an air of lighthearted humor or joke. Just as the fool in Shakespeare’s dramas breaks the solemnity of the scene with parodies and nonsense, so does Cervantes in Don Quixote:

At that moment a pig castrator arrived at the inn, and when he arrived he blew his reed flute four or five times, which confirmed to Don Quixote that he was in a famous castle where they entertained him with music, and that the cod was trout. , the tender and white bread, the prostitutes ladies, the innkeeper the Castilian of the castle, and that his decision to leave had been correct (Cervantes 29).

When a zeugma joins concrete and abstract nouns, the combinations can arouse the reader’s emotions. Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried is full of these kinds of zeugmas:

However, as protection against bad times, Kiowa also carried her grandmother’s mistrust of the white man, her grandfather’s old hunting ax (3). He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men (5). But Ted Lavender, who was scared, was carrying 34 bullets when he was shot and killed on the outskirts of Than Khe, and he fell under an exceptional load, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, in addition to the bulletproof vest, helmet, rations, water and toilet paper. and tranquilizers and everything else, plus non-heavy fear (6).

See how Gabriel García Márquez creates atmospheric tension with the use of a governing verb, ‘listen’:

He dressed to the touch, listening in the dark to his brother’s quiet breathing, his father’s dry cough in the next room, the asthma of the chickens in the yard, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the beating of his heart, and the Excessive hustle and bustle of a world that she hadn’t noticed until then, and she went out into the street asleep (García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude 27).

We have not exhausted the subject, because there are other derivatives of zeugma that depend on in which space of the sentence the zeugma is placed; but its sophistication can cause ambiguity and confusion; therefore, we do not recommend its use.