{{Short description|Rhetorical technique}} '''Synchysis''' is a rhetorical technique wherein words are intentionally scattered to create bewilderment, or for some other purpose.<ref name="Gaynor"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">{{cite book | last1 = Gaynor | first = Frank | year = 1954 | title = A Dictionary of Linguistics | url = https://www.questia.com/read/1535096 | publisher = Philosophical Library | page = 209}}</span><br> </ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Enos|first=Theresa|title=Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition : communication From Ancient Times to the Information Age|year=2010|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=978-0415875240|page=271}}</ref> By disrupting the normal course of a sentence, it forces the audience to consider the meaning of the words and the relationship between them.<ref>{{cite web|title=Synchysis|url=http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/figures_speech/synchysis.htm|publisher=Changing Minds|accessdate=22 October 2013}}</ref>
== Examples == *"I run and shoot, quickly and accurately." *"Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear" – Alexander Pope, "Epistle II. To a Lady" (1743) *"When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep,<br>Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep" – Alexander Pope, Essay on Man. ::(That is, "When earthquakes swallow towns to one grave, or when tempests sweep whole nations to the deep".)
== In poetry == This poetry form was a favorite with Latin poets. It is described by the website Silva Rhetoricae as "Hyperbaton or anastrophe taken to an obscuring extreme, either accidentally or purposefully."<ref>Silva Rhetoricae, rhetoric.byu.edu</ref>. While some debate its intentionality in Latin poetry, Synchysis provided authors with creative flexibility while trying to conform to Greek and Latin metre.
Because various word orderings can be considered as synchyses, it may be opposed to the more distinct chiasmus, which is a phrase in the form A-B-B-A, either in the same line or in two consecutive lines.{{citation needed|date=June 2022}} Synchysis can also be compared to anastrophe, a figure of speech in which a novel arrangement is contrasted with the typical ordering of the subject, object and verb in a language without free syntax in those elements.
A line of Latin verse in the form ''adjective A - adjective B - verb - noun A - noun B'', with the verb in the center (or a corresponding chiastic line, again with the verb in the center), is known as a golden line. A highly common occurrence in Virgil's Aeneid,<ref>Pharr, Grammatical Appendix</ref> an example is ''aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem'', "a golden clasp bound her purple cloak" (Virgil, Aeneid 4.139). Usually, synchysis is formed through the ''adjective A - adjective B - noun A - noun B'' structure, but it can also exist as ''adjective-noun-adjective-noun''.<ref>{{cite web|last=Alford|first=L.D.|title=Rising Action – Figures of Speech, Synchysis|date=10 November 2012 |url=http://novelscene.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/rising-action-figures-of-speech-synchysis/|accessdate=22 October 2013}}</ref>
Today, it is mainly found in poetry,<ref>{{cite web|title=Synchyses|url=http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/figures_speech/synchysis.htm|publisher=Changing Minds|accessdate=22 October 2013}}</ref> where poets use it to maintain metre or rhyme.<ref>{{cite book|last=Zimmerman|first=Brett|title=Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style|year=2005|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|location=Montreal|isbn=0773528997|page=129|edition=[Online-Ausg.].}}</ref>
== Examples in Latin poetry == Catullus notably made use of synchysis in his poetry. Catullus 75 has this line:
:''Huc est mens deducta tuā mea Lesbia culpa''<ref>{{cite web|title=Catul. 75 |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0003%3Apoem%3D75|publisher=Perseus Digital Library Project |accessdate=5 November 2014}}</ref> Taking ''mea'' with ''Lesbia'' this line reads: :To this point, (my) mind is reduced by your guilt, my Lesbia.
The correct way to translate the line, however, is to take it with the more distant ''mens'', observing Catullus's synchysis: :To this point, Lesbia, my mind is reduced by your guilt. Another example comes from Horace (Odes I.35, lines 5ff.), part of a hymn to a goddess:
:''te pauper ambit sollicitā prece'' :''ruris colonus, te dominam aequoris'' ::''quicumque Tyrrhenā lacessit'' :::''Carpathium pelagus carinā''.
The meaning is "thee, (the mistress) of the countryside, the poor farmer beseeches with anxious prayer, thee, the mistress of the ocean, whoever provokes the Carpathian sea in a Tyrrhenian boat (beseeches)", ''dominam'' being understood with ''ruris'' as well as ''aequoris''. Often, through failure to spot the synchysis, ''ruris'' is taken with ''colonus'', and the verse is incorrectly translated as "the poor farmer of the countryside".
==See also== {{wiktionary}} * Chiasmus * Golden line
==References== {{reflist}}
Category:Poetic forms Category:Word order Category:Ambiguity Category:Obfuscation
{{Poetry-stub}} {{Ling-stub}}