Scesis Onomaton
Restating one idea through a string of near-synonymous phrases.
Scesis onomaton is the piling up of phrases that all say substantially the same thing in different words: 'he was finished, done, spent, past all use'. The Greek name means something like 'a relation of names', and the effect is emphasis through saturation rather than through a single strong word.
It differs from accumulatio, which gathers distinct points into a summary, and from pleonasm, which is redundancy without rhetorical intent. Scesis onomaton is deliberate redundancy: the writer knows the second phrase adds no information and includes it to add weight, rhythm, or the sense of a speaker circling something too large to name once.
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English prose used it constantly — the Book of Common Prayer's doubled pairs ('erred and strayed', 'devices and desires') are a mild, formulaic version, partly a hangover from an era when legal English doubled Anglo-Saxon and Latinate terms to be safe in both registers.
Common mistake: reaching for the figure when the first phrase was simply weak. Three vague synonyms are not stronger than one accurate word; the device works only when each restatement adds a shade of tone.
“We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.”
Keep reading the glossary
The use of more words than strictly necessary — sometimes an error, sometimes a deliberate figure of emphasis.
A figure in which points already made are gathered and restated in a compressed rush at the end of an argument.
A figure in which the speaker lingers on the same point by restating it in different words — dwelling for emphasis.
Refining the same idea by restating it in varied forms.