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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epiphrase | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphrase | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:41:05.688061+00:00 | kb-cron |
An epiphrase (meaning "what it is said in addition", from ancient Greek ἐπί/epí "in addition" and φράσις/phrásis "phrase") is a figure of speech that consists of joining one or more sentence segments to the end of a syntactically completed sentence or group as a conclusion or to emphasize a fact. The epiphrase can be used in two ways. It can indeed be used to add a word to an already finished speech or can allow the author to include a personal comment in their speech. Identifying it can be difficult as it is like other figures such as the epiphonema, the parenthesis, or the hyperbaton. Its stylistic resources can be an idea or word amplification, a feeling or reflection highlighting, and the effect of distance or on the contrary of approaching the reader, with an often comic or humorous intention.
== Identification ==
=== Etymology === The "epiphrase" is a neologism with two Greek roots: ἐπί/epí which means "in addition", and φράσις/phrásis which means "phrase". For the grammar professor and linguist Patrick Bacry, it is literally "what it is said in addition" (there is a related Greek verb ἐπιφράζειν/epiphrázein that means "to say furthermore") or 'added explanation". He also points out that the word "epiphrase" is "not widely used".
=== Definition === The Dictionnaire de la langue française by Émile Littré defines epiphrase as a figure of speech in which "one or more words are added to a phrase that seemed finished in order to develop more ideas". According to the linguist and stylist Bernard Dupriez, the epiphrase is part of a phrase that is added specially to indicate the author or character's feelings as in this example from the novel Le Curé de Cucugnan by Alphonse Daudet:
"Tomorrow, Monday, I will confess the old men and women. It's nothing. Tuesday, the children. I'll be done soon." For Pierre Fontanier, an eighteenth-century grammarian, the epiphrase is synonymous with "addition" and is merely a kind of hyperbaton. According to him, it is more precisely a half-parabasis that takes the form of parentheses or an incidental proposition, or even an incidental in a parenthesis. This example from Henry de Montherlant (Les Célibataires) shows that the epiphrase can indeed be added to the typographical parenthesis:
"The expression on Mr. Octave's face when he saw smoke (cigarette smoke) in his room (his room...), and ashes on his carpet (his carpet...), was worthy of the theater." For the French academic and specialist in stylistics Henri Suhamy, the epiphrase is almost synonymous with epiphonemas (the addition of an often sententious statement to a textual whole that seems to be finished) and paremboles (a proposition inserted into a speech to express the personal point of view of the author or narrator), especially when it designates "indignant exclamations, moralistic reflections, conclusions and general ideas with which orators or fictitious characters comment on their own speeches". As an example, Suhamy quotes the words of Ferrante, a character in Henry de Montherlant's tragedy La Reine Morte:
"I forgive you. But how vain is forgiveness!" Patrick Bacry talks about a quick author's comment, in a few words, in the form of parentheses, about what he is evoking, as in this sentence by Alexandre Dumas in which the epífrase is marked using an incise:
"Their fortune was otherwise made, not their fortune with the king, but their position assured." Patrick Bacry points out that the figure also designates a "development, always terminative and as if added to an idea on which the sentence, the narrative, the discourse seemed to have to end." He quotes Ronsard in his Discours:
They broke my dress by breaking my cities, Making my citizens despise me, Have plundered my hair by pillaging my churches,
My churches, alas! that by force they took, In powder, smashing images and altars, Venerable residence of our immortal saints.
The sentence, which gave the impression of ending with the third verse, continues in a "sort of final rebound that constitutes the epiphrase." Georges Molinié, a specialist in French stylistics, considers that the epiphrase is formed when the added utterance is "thematically and syntactically attached to what precedes", by means of a linguistic index such as an anaphoric for example. However, the figure only serves to flesh out a discourse. The epiphrase exists in most other languages, as here in German, with a line from Friedrich von Schiller's play Guillaume Tell:
"Mein Retter seid Ihr und mein Engel." ("You are my savior and my angel.")
=== The difference with the epiphonema === Etymologically, the figure designates an "added word", close to the epiphonema, but it differs from it by the fact that it adds a brief comment to the discourse. Moreover, if the epiphrase is removed, the discourse does not lose any raw information, as in this sentence by Marcel Proust:
"Mrs. Verdurin was still telling me this on the last day (you know, on the eve of departure we talk better)." Michèle Aquien and Georges Molinié classify the epiphrase as a macrostructural figure: it concerns a discourse often considered complete, but which is enriched by a thought, forming the epiphrase, "which could well be produced elsewhere or on its own but which in this case forms a development welded to the articulation of the reasoning in the text." Moreover, the removal of the epiphrase "would distort the argument". It is this non-removable feature that distinguishes the epiphrase from the epiphonema, which is an added but syntactically and semantically optional word. Michèle Aquien and Georges Molinié cite this aphorism of Saint-Just as an example: