(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!"
Valediction
Definition:
(n.) A farewell; a bidding farewell.
Example Sentences:
(1) As they crowded around my camera they shouted out their professions as a kind of valediction: "I'm an interior designer … sales rep … bank clerk … I'm a classical pianist and I studied at the fucking Royal Academy!"
(2) Georgia Gould does not quote from her father's letter to her, though she says she reads it all the time, but her valediction is no less moving, detailing the closeness and moments of comedy of the final days, with a kind of euphoria.
(3) Roth has lived a life so dedicated to his work – long, isolated days wrestling with tricky, often painful material – that it's hard not to take his valediction at face value; despite the mixed reception received by some of his later novels , his withdrawal is unlikely to have been caused by a fit of pique.
(4) Forthrightness is a permissible perk of valediction and Sir Michael is as well qualified as anyone to opine on educational inequality.
(5) After the predictable and fun reunion of former cast members , after a long on-screen tribute to all the behind-the-scenes workers, he left a kind of valediction on the show’s purpose, and its target: “institutional bullshit designed to obscure and distract”.