(n.) Choice of words for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems.
Example Sentences:
(1) The prose rhythm and colloquial diction here work against exaggeration, but allow for humour.
(2) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.
(3) If you ever feel tempted to say "status quo" or "cul de sac", for instance, Orwell will sneer at you for "pretentious diction".
(4) Now 86, Daddy – the 11th Duke of Marlborough - has the garbled, sticky plum crumble diction of the irredeemably posh.
(5) He turns his attention to today's male movie stars and their penchant for mumbling (Hopkins has always prided himself on his diction).
(6) Discriminant analyses, using both untransformed and range-corrected data made excellent post-dictions of group membership.
(7) Americans don't have passports, we don't meet many foreigners, and we think proper English diction is an indicator of condescension or homosexuality.
(8) The diction of the original tells us that its author was, broadly speaking, a northerner.
(9) It's a beautifully musical film all the way through, in fact, partly an effect of Katie Johnson's delivery as Mrs W : incredible gentle diction, all sweet bleats and trilly intonation.
(10) Only his co-host, Loyd Grossman, had a voice and diction to, if anything, rival Frost's own.
(11) This section was presented by Loyd Grossman, whose diction and presenting style were even more distinctive than Frost's.
(12) Nor could the chosen diction of the American have been further from the socially diagnostic wit of Jane Austen or the stuffed-pudding plenitude of the young Dickens.
(13) In one letter (to her parents), she raved about Michael Redgrave's Hamlet saying it made Olivier's 'beautiful diction, dramatic pauses, loud music and despairing cries sound like pure unadulterated ham'.
(14) Diction and fractures of resin teeth were more common problems in maxillae; cheek and lip biting was a more frequent postinsertion complication in the treatment of mandibles.
(15) Sebald's seemingly passive prose was in fact – to borrow Marianne Moore's memorable phrase – "diction galvanised against inertia".
(16) With the Instagram posts showing no sign of stopping we’ve come up with a short guide to the Chechen ruler’s dramatic diction to help you understand who the “dastardly villains” are; what threat they pose to “the nation that rose from its knees”.
(17) But I never really responded to the antique diction and syntax - it struck me at times as even older than the original.
(18) Twain would have been apoplectic at the presumption: one of the letters he included in his drafts, reprinted in the autobiography's first volume, is a rebuke to an editor who dared to alter the great man's diction in his essay on Joan of Arc .
(19) He takes his 19th-century Gothic diction from the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter , and a fair amount of his obsessive extremism from the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard .
(20) The tennis player Annabel Croft, when meeting her genuinely homeless "buddy" David, said, with the immaculate diction of a woman regarding the drinks tray at a garden party: "I have been very nervous about who I was going to meet but I'm pleasantly surprised!"
Phrasing
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Phrase
(n.) Method of expression; association of words.
(n.) The act or method of grouping the notes so as to form distinct musical phrases.
Example Sentences:
(1) But in 2017, to borrow another phrase from across the pond, there simply is no alternative.
(2) I never accuse a student of plagiarizing unless I have proof, almost always in the form of sources easily found by Googling a few choice phrases.
(3) It's that he habitually abuses his position by lobbying ministers at all; I've heard from former ministers who were astonished by the speed with which their first missive from Charles arrived, opening with the phrase: "It really is appalling".
(4) The phrase “self-inflicted blow” was one he used repeatedly, along with the word “glib” – applied to his Vote Leave opponents.
(5) On Thursday, Dutton had scaled his language back, instead using a phrase to describe Labor’s policy borrowed from former prime minister, Tony Abbott.
(6) At a dinner party, say, if ever you hear a person speak of a school for Islamic children, or Catholic children (you can read such phrases daily in newspapers), pounce: "How dare you?
(7) The #putyourwalletsout phrase was coined by Sydney-based Twitter user Steve Lopez, who accompanied it with a photo of his wallet.
(8) He admitted that he had “no reason” to fire the shots that killed Steenkamp, as Nel told him: “Your version is so improbable, that nobody would ever think it’s reasonably, possibly true, it’s so impossible … Your version is a lie.” Nel said the phrase “I love you” appeared only twice in WhatsApp messages from Steenkamp and, on both occasions, they were written to her mother: “Never to you and you never to her.” Day 20: live coverage as it happened.
(9) Von Trier, who took a " vow of silence " after being banned from the Cannes film festival in 2011 after joking about Nazism during a press conference for Melancholia, arrived at Nymphomaniac's photocall wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "Persona Non Grata"; true to his word, he failed to attend the subsequent press conference where his actors and producer talked about the film.
(10) (now the phrase "reverse engineer" has me thinking).
(11) In it he translated Trump’s coarse ramblings into charming straight talk and came up with the phrase “truthful hyperbole”, which captures brilliantly an approach to business and politics in which everything is the greatest, the most beautiful.
(12) To complement these results a perception test was carried out in which 29 native speakers identified a randomised sequence of 220 stimuli from tape as one of the phrases 'Diese Gruppe kann ich nicht leid(e)n (leit(e)n)'.
(13) Peskov has refused to deny the phrase, saying only that Ponomaryov's publicising of a private conversation was "not manly".
(14) One of my technologists has a phrase: ‘internet of other people’s things,’” Tien said.
(15) The phrase “currency war” speaks to a seemingly phoney battle between the world’s major trading powers over the price of exports.
(16) Thereafter they both got so angry with one another they started adopting each other's pet phrases – "I won't be lectured to by..." – and there was the unnerving possibility they might just morph into a single, spluttering entity.
(17) Later that year, speaking at Sinn Féin's annual conference, I used the phrase "the Armalite and the ballot box" to sum up the new duel strategy of engaging in armed struggle and simultaneously contesting elections.
(18) Mohan also said it amounted to an "innocuous British institution", a phrase that inadvertently emphasised its anachronistic nature.
(19) The phrase "Frankenfood" entered tabloid English at the turn of the last century when protesters, backed by the green movement, trashed GM crops wearing white overalls and face masks as an emotive PR tactic.
(20) The phrase "Defender of the Faith," which is usually included in the King's titles, appears neither in the instrument of abdication nor in the bill.