Omission & Flow
Polysyndeton
Using more connecting words than needed — and… and… and. Every item gets equal weight, and the series feels relentless. The effect can be biblical, breathless, or exhausted, depending on what is stacked.
"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house…" — Matthew 7:25
Don't confuse it with Asyndeton, Parataxis. Asyndeton deletes the connectives instead. Parataxis is the broader habit of coordination over subordination; polysyndeton is its most audible form.
In the Reader — 29 excerpts
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
She had read Paul and Virginia, and she had dreamed of the little bamboo house, the negro Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear …
The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls.
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...
costliness and splendor with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.
to. He profiled directly in front of the bull, drew the sword out of the folds of the muleta and sighted along the blade.
were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going
nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind.
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
…mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
…and 5 more. Meet the rest in the quiz →
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with polysyndeton most often — company reveals character.
Anaphora 24 Litotes 11 Parallelism 9 Chiasmus 9 Metaphor 8 Asyndeton 8 Parataxis 7 Antithesis 7