Talk:Meiosis (figure of speech)

Clean-Up Needed
This article could do with clean up. It doesn't cite sources, and it does thing like give an example and then have an example section. I can't find verification of this word meaning what the author of this page claims. Can anyone else? Goyston 14:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I added another source. The term is mostly used in description of rhetorical techniques, which is probably why you had difficulty finding it. Maria Caliban 04:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I found another too. I have fixed up the references section a bit, I think, and removed the tag. Hoorah! Can anyone check that I did indeed format the citation for the online dictionary correctly? Thanks!--Goyston 22:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

"except that in auxesis, the goal is ironic effect"
Funny, of the four examples in the article on auxesis, none is ironic.Bgp2000 18:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed move
I think Meiosis (rhetoric) might be a more appropriate location for this article. 'Figure of speech' would apply well to examples of Meiosis, but not to the term itself. There are only a handful of incoming links, so it'll be an easy move. -- Vary | Talk 03:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Bizarre example
The article claims that an example of meiosis is:


 * "He had need rise early, who would please every body." American proverb.

This comes with an explanation:


 * This proverb is an understatement because even if you get up early in the morning and try to suit everybody, it will not succeed. Its meaning is that you should take care of yourself, rather than appeasing others wishes.

This is so obviously strange that I deleted it, briefly explaining myself in the edit summary. It seems that my explanation was insufficient, as an editor has just now readded it (complete with anomalous formatting: it alone among the examples is bold).

So I suppose I have to try a second time.

The proverb means "Somebody who wants to please everybody needs to rise early."

It's analogous to "Somebody who wants to run a marathon needs to wear running shoes." Rightly or wrongly, this implies that if you don't wear running shoes, you won't succeed in running a marathon. It does not imply that wearing running shoes results in the successful running of a marathon: the speaker says nothing incompatible with his or her understanding that the shoe-wearer might collapse because of heat stroke, be hit by a truck, etc etc.

So all the proverb implies is that if you wake up early, you may please everybody and you may not; whereas if you don't wake up early, you won't please everybody.

Additionally, the article now says vaguely that "it will not succeed" without indicating the referent of "it". Is this supposed to mean that there are several billion people on the planet, pleasing all of them is impossible, and therein the understatement of difficulty? If so, then this interpretation too is bizarre, because it's normal for the referent of "everybody" to be pragmatically supplied. (For example, if you talk about a party in Peoria and in that context say that everybody had a good time, it's clear that you mean the people at the party, and not also people who were in Mauretania or Brunei while the party was going on.) If not, then I don't know what it means. -- Hoary (talk) 08:11, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Removed incorrect example
Removed following example: Because it is not in keeping with the definition (in the article head) - the Black Knight is in complete denial about his injuries - and genuinely believes that it is 'only a flesh wound'. Therefore he is not employing the phrase as a rhetorical device. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crispyhull (talk • contribs) 10:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ("It's just a flesh wound!")