Meanings
- rhetoricuncountableThe repetition of terms within successive sentences
1 more example
Somewhat less gentle is the anonymous The Modern Hiawatha, a sharp take on Longfellow’s insistent use of anaphora, mesodiplosis and other forms of repetition in his famous Song of Hiawatha, and also of the sense of bathos that these devices can often create, in part, at least, because of a tendency to over-explain everything by saying the same thing several times.
2015 October 2, Billy Mills, “Poster poems: parody”, in The Guardian
Origin
- Ancient Greekμέσος“middle”
- Englishmesodiplosis
From Ancient Greek μέσος (mésos, “middle”) + δίπλωσις (díplōsis, “a doubling”)
More words from Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
mesodiplosis. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mesodiplosis
“mesodiplosis.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mesodiplosis. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mesodiplosis,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mesodiplosis.
Source: mesodiplosis on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.