Covered with dust and glory

As a writer, there are two things in particular I pride myself on in my craft:

1. Saying a lot with few words, and
2. Being really clever and playful.

It follows rather naturally, then, that one of my favourite literary techniques would be the zeugma, in which a single word or phrase is connected to different parts of a sentence, thereby creating different meanings for that word or phrase. This excellent little technique allows me to say multiple things at once, and it's a great structure for subtle humour. Perfect! Let's introduce you to it.

There are a bunch of types of zeugma (or, perhaps more accurately, the term "zeugma" is applied to a bunch of different things), but there are a couple of aspects that are key to the technique. The first is the idea of "ellipsis", which is a linguistic word referring to a gap in the structure of a sentence that we can skip over while still understanding it. Along with that, we generally need to have multiple layers of meaning. Let's have a look at how these aspects work together in the example I used for the title of this post, which is taken from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

When Twain says his characters have "covered themselves with dust and glory", he is using the word "covered" in both a literal way (i.e. the dust) and a figurative way (the glory); that's where our multiple layers of meaning come in. The combination of literal and figurative language is popular in zeugma, as are verbs with a broad range of uses such as "take". In our example the ellipsis comes out of the different layers of meaning—because the dust and the glory are not actually doing the same thing, despite the same word being used to describe the action, the most grammatically correct way to write out the phrase would be to separate it into two actions: "they covered [as in encased] themselves with dust and covered [as in embellished] themselves with glory".

Another example you might be familiar with can be found in the song "Be Prepared" from The Lion King: "my teeth and ambitions are bared". As with the previous example, we have both a literal meaning (bared teeth) and a figurative one (bared ambition). This one is a bit more interesting, though, because while "bared teeth" is a pretty common phrase, especially when talking about lions, people don't generally say they "bare" their ambition. They might reveal it or make it plain, or perhaps the ambition could be laid bare, but "my ambitions are bared" is a very odd way to put it. This phrasing only flows within the framework of the zeugma, which draws attention to its use more than the Twain example.

Mixing different meanings together can be a useful springboard for humour in your writing, if you're into that (I certainly am). Even if you aren't aiming to be funny, zeugma can make your prose really pop. Here are some examples from me to show you a few of the possibilities:

• He stole her heart, and her silverware.
• If you will not take tea, perhaps you will take some advice.
• He returned from the war with a chest full of medals and a deep distrust of human nature.
• My blood pressure plummeted, as did I.
• She made potato salad and a big decision.

I mentioned before that the word "zeugma" could refer to a few different things—another, slightly less entertaining, definition focuses less on multiple meanings and more on ellipsis in the context of parallel phrases. This form of zeugma is perhaps older, and more popular in classic texts (it's the definition used by Samuel Johnson's 18th-century dictionary). An example from Cicero can be translated as "Lust conquered shame; audacity, fear; madness, reason." Here the ellipsis is removing the repetition of "conquered" from the second and third phrases, which would otherwise follow the same pattern as the first. A more modern usage of this type can be found in John F Kennedy's inaugural address: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." You can see a similar parallel structure to the phrases here, with the ellipsis again removing repetition, but in this case the text being removed is from the start of the sentence rather than the middle, so it's easier to follow (very important for a speech).

However you choose to use zeugma, it can be a great way to add some interest to your prose, and perhaps a sheen of sophistication or humour while you're at it. I would love to hear what your favourite uses of zeugma are, and how you may have used it in your own work; please share in the comments! If you haven't tried it out yet, I highly encourage you to give it a go.

Good luck, and happy writing!