Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun rhetoric A form of
euphemism in which apositive synonym is substituted for anegative word.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Ancient Greek παρα (para, "next to, alongside") + διαστολή (diastole, "separation, distinction").
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Examples
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whichbe commented on the word paradiastole
A euphemistic half-truth. (Luciferous Logolepsy)
May 16, 2008
vanishedone commented on the word paradiastole
Spiked: '...This first becomes clear in Runciman’s discussion of Hobbes where he turns to look at paradiastole, or what the intellectual historian, Quentin Skinner, calls ‘rhetorical redescription’. This denotes the act of not just describing an action, but, in doing so, commending or denouncing it. For Hobbes, this was what he called ‘colouring’, the act of giving an action a particular moral hue.'
July 27, 2008