Diacope

Diacope is a rhetorical term meaning repetition of a word or phrase broken up by other words or phrases.^{[example needed]} It derives from a Greek word meaning "cut in two"^{[1][clarification needed]}

Examples:

"Scott Farkus staring out at us with his yellow eyes. He had yellow eyes! So help me, God! Yellow eyes!" (Ralphie Parker, A Christmas Story, 1983)

"And now, my beauties, something with poison in it, I think. With poison in it, but attractive to the eye and soothing to the smell." (The Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz, 1939)

"In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these." (Paul Harvey) This is also an example of an epanalepsis.

"They will laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment and his wax." (Edmund Burke, "A Letter to a Noble Lord," 1796)

"I'm gonna cut out now with this unusual song I'm dedicating to an unusual person who makes me feel kind of unusual." (Christian Slater as Mark Hunter in Pump Up the Volume, 1990)

"I knew it. Born in a hotel room--and goddamn it--died in a hotel room." (last words of playwright Eugene O'Neill)

See also

• Epizeuxis
• Tmesis

References

1. ^ http://grammar.about.com/od/d/g/diacopeterm.htm