Explanation
Epiploce is an extended chain of verbal resumption in which an expression recurs across several units of speech or syntax and holds their movement together. Repetition may connect each transition, accumulate meanings, or carry a term through changing contexts. Historical definitions are not uniform and overlap with conduplicatio, anadiplosis, and gradatio; position, scope, and intensifying function must therefore be specified in each example. A single recurrence across only two members will usually not produce the characteristic chain effect. Epiploce turns language into a space of memory: what has been said is not closed but becomes the starting point of the next unit. The movement follows a word through several stations where it gathers, transmits, and audibly condenses relations across a longer passage.
Movement of thought
1. A prominent expression first occurs in one unit of discourse and acquires semantic or rhythmic weight. 2. A following unit resumes it and binds new content to the verbal memory of the preceding occurrence. 3. Further resumptions extend the chain, accumulate relations, and may increase intensity or argumentative reach. 4. A counter-test examines number, position, and function and separates epiploce from isolated repetition, anadiplosis, conduplicatio, and gradatio. 5. The recurring expression runs through the passage as a trace; each station changes it while it holds separate members together.
Scientific use case
Rhetoric, corpus poetics, and stylistics annotate repetition position, chain length, variation, and intensification. Historical source criticism clarifies competing definitions and avoids automatic conflation of related figures.
Example
“From doubt grows the question; the question calls for testing; testing changes judgement” carries a resumed element through several members into new relations.
Counterexample
A word happens to occur twice in a long paragraph without prominent position, linkage, or continuing function. Frequency alone does not create epiploce.
Distinction
Distinguish it from anadiplosis, gradatio, conduplicatio, epanalepsis, anaphora, leitmotif, and arbitrary repetition; state transition position, number of members, lexical identity, and cumulative function.
Effect on thought and perception
Epiploce creates cohesion, rhythmic expectation, and cumulative intensity; mechanically repeated chains may lose semantic development and become merely redundant.
Resonance
A word passes itself from sentence to sentence; its echo does not remain at the origin but gathers a new layer of meaning at every station.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Epiploce“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-172-0019. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-172-0019The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.
Historical background
Bullinger associates epiploce with repeated anadiplosis: the end of one clause becomes the beginning of another, producing a connected sequence. He carefully separates a chain of repeated wording from a rise in the importance of the ideas expressed. This distinction is historically useful because a ladder-like verbal form need not always produce a ladder of increasing significance. For the Atlas, the chain can make a conclusion feel linked to an initial premise, but rhetorical linkage does not establish a valid inference between the steps. Bullinger also records competing names and applications, rather than offering a uniquely fixed taxonomy. His passage witnesses a late nineteenth-century explanation of epiploce; its English lexical history and wider uses of interweaving require further checking.
How conceptual history changes the analysis
Test each link in the chain. Repeated wording can make successive steps feel connected without establishing valid inference.
References for the historical section
- E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (1898), Cornell scan · PDF p. 312: Climax and Epiploce
Selected historical witness, not a complete genealogy or a first English attestation. Atlas comparisons and applications are original editorial interpretations. Uncorrected scan text layer; page numbers are PDF pages. Bullinger’s classifications and theological judgments are historical evidence, not a current consensus.
- E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (1898), Cornell scan · PDF p. 312: Climax and Epiploce
Selected historical witness, not a complete genealogy or a first English attestation. Atlas comparisons and applications are original editorial interpretations. Uncorrected scan text layer; page numbers are PDF pages. Bullinger’s classifications and theological judgments are historical evidence, not a current consensus.