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anaphora

When a phrase is repeated at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph, that's anaphora. It's used to show emphasis — a popular tool by politicians, religious leaders, lyricists, and even some authors.

Martin Luther King was a fan of anaphora. In his most famous speech, he used "I have a dream" eight different times. Here, anaphora is a rhetorical technique that repeats a phrase to drive home a point. As a literary device, anaphora replaces a noun with a pronoun, which refers back to the noun: "We have a bushel of apples. Take one." "One" refers to the apples, an example of anaphora.

DEFINITIONS OF: anaphora

1

n repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses

Synonyms:
epanaphora
Type of:
repetition
the repeated use of the same word or word pattern as a rhetorical device

n using a pronoun or similar word instead of repeating a word used earlier

Type of:
repetition
the repeated use of the same word or word pattern as a rhetorical device
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