Far and wide
Far
and wide
In Brief
Figure of speech. In referring to "the vista far
and wide," Dan Dawson's speech employs the rhetorical
device of synonymia, which is just what it sounds
like: a string of words that mean the same thing.
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Synonymia (sih-no-NIM-ee-uh, from Greek syn- = alike,
together + onoma = name) was recommended by ancient
rhetoricians as a way to amplify or explain. The Ad
Herennium defines it straightforwardly as "the figure
which does not duplicate the same word by repeating it, but
replaces the word that has been used by another of the same
meaning." In The Mystery of Rhetoric Unveiled John
Smith writes that "A Synonymie is a commodious heaping
together of divers words of one signification...when from one
thing many wayes expressed, we fasten many stings as it were
in the minde of the hearer."
The Bible, with its habit of saying everything more than
once, affords countless examples. Here are a few from Exodus
alone: "And the children of Israel were fruitful, and
increased abundantly, and multiplied" (1:7); "This month shall
be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first
month of the year to you" (12:2); "Fear and dread shall fall
upon them" (15:16); "The Lord God, merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, / Keeping
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and
sin" (34:6-7).
Shakespeare too was fond of the device. His disillusioned
prince laments, "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable /
Seem to me all the uses of this world" (Hamlet
1.2.133-34), and the horrified speaker of sonnet 129 produces
an extraordinary string of adjectives to characterize lust:
"perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, / Savage,
extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust." In these instances,
especially the second, the words are not perfectly
synonymous––slight changes of meaning are introduced with each
new one––but the effect is to drive home a single idea and to
suggest that no single word can possibly carry its emotional
weight.
Dawson's "far and wide" is similar, though short,
weak, and trite. Seeing far ahead and seeing far to the side
are slightly different things, but the synonymia amplifies the
sense of the Irish countryside rolling gloriously on and on.
The line between synonymia and exergasia is so fine that
they are sometimes used interchangeably, but in a strict sense
the former concept applies only to single words, and the
latter to longer expressions.
