Epizeuxis
The immediate repetition of a word for emotional emphasis, without any intervening word.
Epizeuxis is the emphatic repetition of a single word, with no words in between: 'Never, never, never give up.' 'Location, location, location.' The Greek root means 'fastening together', which is what the repetition does — it fastens the word to itself, doubling its weight without adding any new information.
The figure is native to spoken English and old poetry. Lear's 'Never, never, never, never, never' at the end of Shakespeare's tragedy — five repetitions in a single iambic pentameter line — is one of the most crushing uses of the figure in the language. In advertising, the estate agent's cliché reduces the whole strategy to a joke.
Because epizeuxis has almost no informational content, it is a high-risk figure. Used at a moment of real feeling, it delivers what no more elegant construction can; used as filler, it is instantly annoying. Save it for the sentence that would collapse without it.
“Never, never, never, never, never.”
Keep reading the glossary
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses.
A figure of speech that repeats the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses.
The art of persuasive speaking and writing — the discipline behind every great quoted line.
Aristotle's three modes of persuasion — character, emotion, and reason.