Practice Anadiplosis, But Avoid `Grubbling' And `Hecticity'

Two delightful books have come to hand: "In a Word," edited by Jack Hitt, and "The Art of Persuasion," by Linda Bridges and William F. Rickenbacker. Let me commend them to you.

Hitt is a contributing editor to Harper's magazine. Some years ago, while still in college, an idle thought captured his fancy: The English language has more than 600,000 words, but even that mountainous vocabulary fails to provide special words for special occasions.

For example, there is no English word to fit an occurrence that almost everyone has experienced. Suppose that on a Monday morning we are cleaning out old files. We come across a 25-year-old letter from a fraternity brother. We haven't heard from Paul in the interim. On Tuesday the telephone rings, and from across the years comes his familiar voice. Then, on Wednesday, in some context, Paul's name crops up again. What is this phenomenon to be called?

Hitt had a meaning in search of a word. A couple of years ago he wrote to a number of novelists, journalists, actors, musicians and scientists, asking them to think of a linguistic need and then coin a word to fill it. Most of his correspondents responded enthusiastically, and "In a Word" resulted.

William F. Buckley Jr. submitted "hecticity," defined as a state of disarray, of high and frequent demand, or of superheated activity. "The hecticity of his daily routine in the trading room brought on a nervous collapse."

Novelist Louis Phillips came up with "claprehension," to describe the anxiety suffered by a concertgoer who cannot remember when to applaud.

Witold Rybcznski, a professor at McGill University, contributed "faction," defined as "any literary work portraying real characters or events, as a biography, history or social commentary."

From poet Daniel Mark Epstein came two beauties: "cankertone" and "grubble." A cankertone is "an enthusiastic singer without talent, one who delights in singing despite the pain it inflicts upon others," as in, "We were afraid to attend the wedding for fear some cankertone would sing `O Promise Me.' "

"Grubble," a verb, means "to enjoy the largess of one's betters while harboring resentment against them." Epstein's sample sentence: "Many who grubble in the governor's mansion will not turn a hand to see him re-elected."

Apparently Hitt never did coin a word that satisfied him, so the phenomenon of suddenly recurring associations remains undefined. His compendium will be published next month by Dell. It's pure fun.

Linda Bridges and Bill Rickenbacker have produced a fine book of a different sort. Theirs is no primer for the beginning writer. They are aiming at professionals, or at least at writers who do not have to be instructed in the evils of a dangling participle.

To give you an idea: The authors list some tools of the writer's trade - anadiplosis, anastrophe, asyndeton, and so forth. This is not so esoteric as it sounds.

"Anadiplosis" is the rhetorical device of starting a clause with the last word of the preceding clause: "The tyrant falls before the oligarch, the oligarch surrenders to democracy, democracy brings liberty, liberty succumbs to license . . ." "Anastrophe" is the device of inversion: Blessed are the poor . . . blessed are the meek . . ." `"syndeton" is the listing of coordinate elements without using conjunctions: game, set, match.

The Writer's Art by James J. Kilpatrick appears Sunday in the Scene section. Address comments or questions to: Writer's Art, c/o Newsroom, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111.