Imperial, imperious, imperative
Imperial,
imperious, imperative
In Brief
Figure of speech. Professor MacHugh describes Rome
as "imperial, imperious, imperative." Later in Aeolus,
J. J. O'Molloy recalls John F. Taylor's saying that if
anything in marble "of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live," it is
Michelangelo's statue of Moses. Both phrasings employ a
rhetorical device called polyptoton or paregmenon:
using different forms of the same root word in close
proximity.
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Paregmenon (puh-REG-muh-nun, from paragein = to bring
side by side) is the more general term, referring to the use
of any changed forms of a word. Polyptoton (puh-LIP-tuh-ton,
from Greek poly- = many + ptosis =
[grammatical] case or ptotos = falling) was apparently
a subset of the general category for ancient rhetoricians,
referring specifically to the use of different case forms of
nouns or noun modifiers (adjectives, participles). Since
modern English has, with very few exceptions, stopped using
cases, this has become a distinction without a difference. In
English the two words are now more or less synonymous, and
since the early 1900s polyptoton has been used far more
frequently.
Polyptoton is often employed in the Bible: "increasing, I
will increase your sorrow" (Genesis); "Judge not, lest ye be
judged" (Matthew); "we shall all be changed, In a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and
we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (1
Corinthians). Shakespeare was fond of the device: "With eager
feeding food doth choke the feeder" (Richard II); "The
Greeks are strong, and skillful to their strength / Fierce to
their skill, and to their fierceness valiant" (Troilus and
Cressida); "love is not love / Which alters when it
alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove"
(sonnet 116). Many moderns too have memorably employed this
figure: "By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of
becoming idiotic oneself" (Gustave Flaubert); "To be ignorant
of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant" (Bronson
Alcott); "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton);
"The healthy man does not torture others––generally it is the
tortured who turn into torturers" (Carl Jung).
Professor MacHugh's variations on "imperial" play with
the root sense of empire. The Latin verb imperare
means "to command," and the Romans became very good at that.
They were "imperious," acting in a domineering fashion
toward all the peoples in their orbit. They used "imperative"
forms of verbs: Surrender! Submit! Pay homage! Pay tribute!
Die! These three words convey the professor's disdain for the
Roman empire effectively, varying the meaning slightly while
maintaining a single polemical focus. Taylor's "soultransfigured"
and "soultransfiguring" are a little more
flaccid, less interesting.
The example of paregmenon cited by Gilbert, "towering high on high," is still less prepossessing and probably also wrongly classed, since here the form of the word does not vary. It might possibly be called antanaclasis, the repetition of a word with a new meaning, but if so it would be a very weak example. Seidman identifies "imperial, imperious, imperative" as paregmenon and "soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring" as polyptoton. I cannot see any basis for making such a distinction.
