10. Zeugma: Zeugma refers to the situation where a verb or a noun is used as a substitute for a conjunction, so that it has the effect of linking two things together. An example is: she arrived in a red sports car and a bubbly mood. Technically, what you have in that sentence construction is known as ellipsis – the omission of words which are naturally understood - combined with a parallelism that balances the sentence. If you want a really long example of this, try this verse from Take This Waltz, written originally by Federico García Lorca, but translated and adapted by Leonard Cohen to become the lyrics of a song.
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love’s never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
This is a sophisticated example of zeugma, using ellipsis of the pronoun “you” with five subordinate clauses and then rounding it off by using it again in three subjunctive imperatives. You could think of the subjunctive imperative as the implorative, if there were such a word, but there isn’t. And if you didn’t understand a word of that cursory analysis, it doesn’t matter. Just take it from me, learning the meaning of zeugma will not improve your poetic skills.
Incidentally, the opposite of zeugma is hypozeuxis, where you deliberately put words in for effect. This is what’s going on in the first four lines of this verse from The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
Winston Churchill also used hypozeuxis in his famous radio address; “We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!”
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~ Napoleon Bonaparte
