Figure of Speech

Question

Which six letter figure of speech applies to a sentence such as "John left his wife in a taxi and a foul temper"?

Avangi · Accepted Answer

Wow, I found a list of seventeen, but that one is not among them. The reference says that list is only a drop in the bucket.

Edit. Another list of 83 figures of speech. Ditto. (This one claims to be "exhaustive." - Ha!)

You might consider your example a pun, since the preposition "in" is used in two different ways without being repeated.
But that has only three letters.

What do you think about this reference?

http://blog.inkyfool.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

Muck out = clean a stable
Muck in = help

Muck about = play uselessly

Muck up = ruin

So a lazy and incompetent stable boy could be said to muck about constantly, out and in rarely, and up everything.

Rhetorically, this trope of using one verb in several different senses (She left in a taxi and a flood of tears) is called syllepsis. Without doubt the greatest exercise is syllepsis is Have Some Madeira M'Dear by Flanders and Swann.

As you can see, this is a discussion of phrasal verbs.

"Left in" is an example.

Another definition of "syllepsis" differs:

http://www.earnestspeakers.com/figuresofspeech.html

syllepsis
plural syllepses [Latin, from Greek syllepsis‘a taking together", from syllambainein‘to take together’, from syn‘with’ and lambainein‘to take’. Cf. LEMMA.] 1. Grammar The use of a word (as an adjective or verb) to modify or govern syntactically two (sometimes more) words, with only one of which it formally agrees in gender, number, etc. (e.g., Latin rex et regina beati.) Cf. ZEUGMA. 2. Rhetoric Use of a word in the same grammatical relation to two adjacent words in the context, one metaphorical and the other literal in sense (their taunts, more cutting than knives).

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Anonymous · Answer

When I was at school I  think it was called "Zeugma"

Figure of Speech

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