One commonly overlooked aspect of writing is talking. While talking and writing seem like two very different forms of expression, they have been inexorably tied together since the creation of Western civilization. Before the invention of the printing press, private reading was considered an oddity: scrolls and books were made to be read aloud to a crowd since there was only one copy. The congregation didn't have Bibles—the preacher read aloud to them. Students didn't have to read great literature—the instructor read to them. Punctuation and spaces between words didn't even exist in the oldest world languages because they're not natural features of spoken language.
So in these dark times before our beloved em dashes and semicolons, how would a rhetor (one tasked with reading to crowds) know where to pause, stop, and breathe when reciting a text? Simple: he would follow the tune. The oldest written texts were all written in verse, or writing with a regular metrical verse. For the Greeks, the common meter was dactylic hexameter. For the Roman satirists, iambic senarius. For the English, iambic pentameter. The Jews had cantors that sang passages of the Torah, and Christians had hymns they sang as a congregation. Any writing that was to be published and shared was, until the Middle Ages, musical in nature and had a cadence, or a steady and regular rhythm.
After the printing press revolutionized the way writing was communicated, writing no longer had to be in verse. The history of writing up to that point revolved around how things sounded when read aloud more than how they were written on the page, and even though writers were now able to mass-produce prose (writing with no set rhythm), writers couldn't just stop caring about how their writing sounded.
So in these dark times before our beloved em dashes and semicolons, how would a rhetor (one tasked with reading to crowds) know where to pause, stop, and breathe when reciting a text? Simple: he would follow the tune. The oldest written texts were all written in verse, or writing with a regular metrical verse. For the Greeks, the common meter was dactylic hexameter. For the Roman satirists, iambic senarius. For the English, iambic pentameter. The Jews had cantors that sang passages of the Torah, and Christians had hymns they sang as a congregation. Any writing that was to be published and shared was, until the Middle Ages, musical in nature and had a cadence, or a steady and regular rhythm.
After the printing press revolutionized the way writing was communicated, writing no longer had to be in verse. The history of writing up to that point revolved around how things sounded when read aloud more than how they were written on the page, and even though writers were now able to mass-produce prose (writing with no set rhythm), writers couldn't just stop caring about how their writing sounded.
Caring about how writing sounds is part of style's DNA.
While cadence and its associated terminology were kept for verse, prose developed the rules of sonance, the art of manipulating diction and syntax to make a sentence sound a certain way. Borrowing terminology from rhetorical debate, poetry, and even music composition, writers identified how to not only make their words sound nice and pleasing to an audience but also how to accurately depict how real-life sound appears on the page.
A quick note before we start: there is a whole branch of linguistics called phonology that studies how words are said and how their sounds relative to their spellings change over time and why. This is not an article about phonology but ways writers use sound for effect in their writing. While there is some crossover into phonology, don't expect a deep dive into assibilation, palatalization vs. pharyngealization, and the great vowel shift. All of that is fascinating, but it's also off-topic.
A quick note before we start: there is a whole branch of linguistics called phonology that studies how words are said and how their sounds relative to their spellings change over time and why. This is not an article about phonology but ways writers use sound for effect in their writing. While there is some crossover into phonology, don't expect a deep dive into assibilation, palatalization vs. pharyngealization, and the great vowel shift. All of that is fascinating, but it's also off-topic.
Smooth Talker: Creating euphony in writing
Even when not writing in verse, lots of modern writers strive for euphony in their writing. Euphony is Greek for "good sound" and is just that: writing with a pleasing musical quality. But what makes something sound good? To the native English speaker, euphony is created by these five stylistic choices:
Writers can employ several different euphonics that follow these principles. The most popular is assonance, which is a repetition of similar vowel sounds (including diphthongs, which are vowel blends) across a sentence or paragraph. For example, look at the use of the short /o/ sound and short /oo/ sound in poet Dylan Thomas' famous line
- use of long open vowel sounds
- use of muffled consonants called liquids (L, M, N, R, W)
- use of buzzing and hissing sounds called sibilants (F, H, S, Sh, Th, V, Z)
- use of parallel structure and repetition of sounds and words
- use of long, 3+ syllable words that don't start with a stress
Writers can employ several different euphonics that follow these principles. The most popular is assonance, which is a repetition of similar vowel sounds (including diphthongs, which are vowel blends) across a sentence or paragraph. For example, look at the use of the short /o/ sound and short /oo/ sound in poet Dylan Thomas' famous line
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Or look at how modern poet Eminem repeated the /ea/ sound when he wrote,
His palms are sweaty; knees, weak; arms are heavy.
There's vomit on his sweater already—mom's spaghetti.
There's vomit on his sweater already—mom's spaghetti.
Assonance is about sounds, not letters: look how spaghetti still uses the /ea/ diphthong despite not having an ea spelling.
There is also consonance, which is a repetition of similar consonant sounds (including digraphs, which are the consonant equivalent of a diphthong) across a sentence or paragraph. Walt Whitman uses consonance of the /ss/ sound when he wrote,
There is also consonance, which is a repetition of similar consonant sounds (including digraphs, which are the consonant equivalent of a diphthong) across a sentence or paragraph. Walt Whitman uses consonance of the /ss/ sound when he wrote,
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume."
Similarly, Warren Zevon used consonance of the /l/ sound when he sang,
"Little old lady got mutilated late last night—werewolves of London again."
Again, the key is the same sound, not necessarily the same letter: when Seal sang, "Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey," the compare and kiss have the same sound but different letters, but although kiss and rose both have the letter S, it is pronounced differently in both words.
In this last example, compare and kiss not only have the same sound but also start the word with that sound. This is alliteration, a series of words where the first sound is repeated. Alliteration almost always uses consonance, like when the Counting Crows sang, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Occasionally, alliteration can use assonance, like when Tegan and Sara sang, "If I imagine you, body next to another."
Another euphonic that depends on where a sound ends up is ablaut reduplication, a figure of speech where a word is repeated two or three times in a row with a different vowel each time. For doubles, the first vowel is I and the second is either A or O, as in ping-pong, flip-flop, bric-a-brac, riffraff, zigzag, and King Kong. For triples, the order is I-A-O: tic-tac-toe, bing-bang-boom, Big Bad Wolf, Live Laugh Love. The reason the order of ablaut reduplication sounds euphonious, whereas the inverse--hop-hip, tock-tick, mash-mish—doesn't is because irregular verb conjugation mostly uses ablaut reduplication: ride-rode; speak-spoke; fall-fell; drink, drank, drunk; sing, sang, sung; write, wrote, written; arise, arose, arisen.
Another euphonic is partial reduplication,** where the vowels remain the same and instead the first consonant is swapped out (or a consonant is added if the first word starts with a vowel). Replications of this kind include willy-nilly, fuddy-duddy, okie-dokie, higgledy-piggeldy, easy-peasy, and hoity-toity. There's even a subset of this based on a linguistic practice by American Jews called Yiddish reduplication: shm- is added to the front of a duplicated word to show sarcasm. You aren't impressed with the quality of something that's fancy-shmancy, an uninteresting person is a Joe Shmoe, and if none of this interests you, you may say, "English Shminglish!"
In this last example, compare and kiss not only have the same sound but also start the word with that sound. This is alliteration, a series of words where the first sound is repeated. Alliteration almost always uses consonance, like when the Counting Crows sang, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Occasionally, alliteration can use assonance, like when Tegan and Sara sang, "If I imagine you, body next to another."
Another euphonic that depends on where a sound ends up is ablaut reduplication, a figure of speech where a word is repeated two or three times in a row with a different vowel each time. For doubles, the first vowel is I and the second is either A or O, as in ping-pong, flip-flop, bric-a-brac, riffraff, zigzag, and King Kong. For triples, the order is I-A-O: tic-tac-toe, bing-bang-boom, Big Bad Wolf, Live Laugh Love. The reason the order of ablaut reduplication sounds euphonious, whereas the inverse--hop-hip, tock-tick, mash-mish—doesn't is because irregular verb conjugation mostly uses ablaut reduplication: ride-rode; speak-spoke; fall-fell; drink, drank, drunk; sing, sang, sung; write, wrote, written; arise, arose, arisen.
Another euphonic is partial reduplication,** where the vowels remain the same and instead the first consonant is swapped out (or a consonant is added if the first word starts with a vowel). Replications of this kind include willy-nilly, fuddy-duddy, okie-dokie, higgledy-piggeldy, easy-peasy, and hoity-toity. There's even a subset of this based on a linguistic practice by American Jews called Yiddish reduplication: shm- is added to the front of a duplicated word to show sarcasm. You aren't impressed with the quality of something that's fancy-shmancy, an uninteresting person is a Joe Shmoe, and if none of this interests you, you may say, "English Shminglish!"
Sounds Familiar: Rhyming
There's a principle that guides why partial reduplication sounds so pleasing, and it's arguably the easiest way a writer can create euphony in their work: rhyme. Rhyme is simply two or more words with similar-sounding endings in close proximity to one another. Rhyme is one of the two foundations of verse writing along with meter, and with the exception of blank verse (which has meter but no rhyme) and free verse (no meter or rhyme but structured like verse), all verse has a pattern of end rhymes called a rhyme scheme.
While rhyme is mostly thought of as a tool for poetry, prose writing uses it all the time, as, when done right, it ought to create euphony. There are lots of different flavors of rhyme depending on how closely alike the words sound:
Rhymes can also be classified based on where they appear in a poetic line or sentence. End rhyme is, naturally, at the end of a sentence or line of poetry and mates with another end rhyme:
Sometimes, to create an end rhyme, a poet will split a word across the line—this is called a broken rhyme:
Internal rhyme is a rhyming pair that appears in the same poetic line or sentence. Even if one of the rhymes appears at the end of the line or sentence, one internal rhyme makes the pair both internally rhyming.
While rhyme is mostly thought of as a tool for poetry, prose writing uses it all the time, as, when done right, it ought to create euphony. There are lots of different flavors of rhyme depending on how closely alike the words sound:
- True rhyme occurs when
- Slant rhyme (also known as apophany) occurs when the words only kinda rhyme. Whereas the entire end syllable—vowel and consonant sounds together—matches with true rhyme, only the consonant sound matches with slant rhyme.
- Head rhyme flips the definition of rhyme on its head—the first syllables, not the last syllables, of two or more words sound alike. This should sound familiar: head rhyme is another word for alliteration.
- Eye rhyme looks like it should rhyme due to how both words are spelled, but the words don't actually sound the same. While this may seem like poets being lazy, some eye rhyme used to be true rhyme, but as language has evolved, the words no longer rhyme when read with modern eyes.
- Pararhyme is similar to eye rhyme in that the words do not rhyme—they are actually the same word but with different vowel combinations.
- Identical rhyme is the most boring of rhymes—it is the same word pronounced in the same way*** used multiple times to rhyme with itself. A more interesting version of identical rhyme is holorime, which uses a pair of rhyming homophones. The rhyme is still identical since homophones sound alike, but the spellings are notably different.
Rhymes can also be classified based on where they appear in a poetic line or sentence. End rhyme is, naturally, at the end of a sentence or line of poetry and mates with another end rhyme:
Sometimes, to create an end rhyme, a poet will split a word across the line—this is called a broken rhyme:
Internal rhyme is a rhyming pair that appears in the same poetic line or sentence. Even if one of the rhymes appears at the end of the line or sentence, one internal rhyme makes the pair both internally rhyming.
Talking Tough: Creating cacophony in writing
So what happens when writing is nice and pleasing? This is called cacaphony, writing with a harsh and discordant quality. Just as certain stylistic choices create euphony, certain stylistic choices can help you create cacophony:
No sound is bad on its own, so the goal of using these types of sounds and words is to create dissonance, or sounds that clash. Put a fricative by a plosive like in trough, graven, flak jacket, and brick-and-mortar. Find words with as few vowels as possible, like schism, chintzy, thumbscrew, and phthisic. Use words with /oi/ like spoil, foiling, matryoshka, and toiletry.
It's not hard to find a dissonant word—start with words that have negative connotations, and they're likely to also be dissonant in nature. Witchcraft. Knife fight. Noxious. Gargle. Retch. Cockroach. Phlegm. Moist. All of these follow one or more of the stylistic qualities listed above. This isn't a hard and fast rule, though: toy and growth usually have positive connotations but are dissonant while venomous and atrocity are euphonious.
But why would you even want to create dissonance in your writing?
Not everything in the world is pretty and pleasing. Cacophonous writing helps writers convey unpleasant topics like death, war, brutality, crime, genocide, and famine in a way that reflects how disruptive and destructive those topics are. Even if a character is not a war criminal and is just merely unpleasant, giving them dissonant speech can help readers subconsciously dislike them more than the more euphonious heroes. You can even show character growth by starting a nasty character off saying dissonant things like "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men," and later have them show they aren't so bad after all with a euphonious statement like "You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."***
Another way to create dissonance goes beyond how each sentence sounds and how the sentences sound together. Breaking normal sentence constructions through caesura in verse and through anapodoton, anacoluthon, staccato, and holophrasis in prose. To learn more about these techniques, read the article on solecism.
- use of crunchy sounds called weak fricatives (F, V, Th)
- use of popping sounds called plosives (B, D, G, K, P, T)
- use of the diphthongs /oi/ (boil), /ai/ (plight), and /yø/ (yogurt)
- use of short vowels and monosyllabic words
- use words that start with a stress and have several consonants in a row
No sound is bad on its own, so the goal of using these types of sounds and words is to create dissonance, or sounds that clash. Put a fricative by a plosive like in trough, graven, flak jacket, and brick-and-mortar. Find words with as few vowels as possible, like schism, chintzy, thumbscrew, and phthisic. Use words with /oi/ like spoil, foiling, matryoshka, and toiletry.
It's not hard to find a dissonant word—start with words that have negative connotations, and they're likely to also be dissonant in nature. Witchcraft. Knife fight. Noxious. Gargle. Retch. Cockroach. Phlegm. Moist. All of these follow one or more of the stylistic qualities listed above. This isn't a hard and fast rule, though: toy and growth usually have positive connotations but are dissonant while venomous and atrocity are euphonious.
But why would you even want to create dissonance in your writing?
Not everything in the world is pretty and pleasing. Cacophonous writing helps writers convey unpleasant topics like death, war, brutality, crime, genocide, and famine in a way that reflects how disruptive and destructive those topics are. Even if a character is not a war criminal and is just merely unpleasant, giving them dissonant speech can help readers subconsciously dislike them more than the more euphonious heroes. You can even show character growth by starting a nasty character off saying dissonant things like "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men," and later have them show they aren't so bad after all with a euphonious statement like "You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased."***
Another way to create dissonance goes beyond how each sentence sounds and how the sentences sound together. Breaking normal sentence constructions through caesura in verse and through anapodoton, anacoluthon, staccato, and holophrasis in prose. To learn more about these techniques, read the article on solecism.
Buh-Bam! Wham! Daaaaaamn: Creating Special Sounds
If written language is supposed to capture the way real-world talking sounds (and not everyone agrees that it does), then we can't always use the most euphonious words. Or even the most linguistically correct words. Sometimes, we need to create, rebuild, and respell words in nonstandard ways to capture the nuances of spoken language.
For example, how do you show a character stretching out a word longer than it usually takes to say? That's fermata, the excessive repetition of a vowel to show that a speaker is holding on to the sound. The part of this definition that's reeeeeally important is that ooooonly the vowel sounds can be streeeetched out—to do so with a consonant is sssssso wrrrrong. You alsooooo don't want to doooouuuuble two vowels in the same word for the sake of clarity. If you really want to show a deliberate s-s-stretching out of a s-s-starting or ending-g-g consonant, use hyphens with two extra letters (but beware: this is not how most words are naturally held).
Sure, you can stretch a sound in a word, but can you leave a sound out? Yes. Dropping unneeded syllables from a word is a type of solecism called elision. Elision has three main varieties: apheresis, where the first letters or syllables are dropped from a word; apocope, where the last letters or syllables of the word are dropped; and syncope, where letters and syllables are dropped from the middle of a word. Syncope always uses an apostrophe to show where the missing piece was (e'en for even, ) while apheresis and apocope only use apostrophes if single letters are removed or if the truncated word is also an existing word ('round for around, rhymin' for rhyming). A special type of syncope called a contraction can turn multiple words into a single semantic unit (don't for do not, 'tis for it is). Like other forms of syncope, contractions require a comma to show where letters were deleted.
Just as you can leave a sound out of a word, you can add an extra sound between syllables in a word. This is called epenthesis, and it is used to show a regional mispronunciation or a mispronunciation by the speaker for emphasis. For example, a four-year-old who is still learning phonics might say:
For example, how do you show a character stretching out a word longer than it usually takes to say? That's fermata, the excessive repetition of a vowel to show that a speaker is holding on to the sound. The part of this definition that's reeeeeally important is that ooooonly the vowel sounds can be streeeetched out—to do so with a consonant is sssssso wrrrrong. You alsooooo don't want to doooouuuuble two vowels in the same word for the sake of clarity. If you really want to show a deliberate s-s-stretching out of a s-s-starting or ending-g-g consonant, use hyphens with two extra letters (but beware: this is not how most words are naturally held).
Sure, you can stretch a sound in a word, but can you leave a sound out? Yes. Dropping unneeded syllables from a word is a type of solecism called elision. Elision has three main varieties: apheresis, where the first letters or syllables are dropped from a word; apocope, where the last letters or syllables of the word are dropped; and syncope, where letters and syllables are dropped from the middle of a word. Syncope always uses an apostrophe to show where the missing piece was (e'en for even, ) while apheresis and apocope only use apostrophes if single letters are removed or if the truncated word is also an existing word ('round for around, rhymin' for rhyming). A special type of syncope called a contraction can turn multiple words into a single semantic unit (don't for do not, 'tis for it is). Like other forms of syncope, contractions require a comma to show where letters were deleted.
Just as you can leave a sound out of a word, you can add an extra sound between syllables in a word. This is called epenthesis, and it is used to show a regional mispronunciation or a mispronunciation by the speaker for emphasis. For example, a four-year-old who is still learning phonics might say:
My fah-ay-vorite fambily member is my Momma,
my fah-ay-vorite colwor is buh-lue, and my fah-ay-vorite aminal is a birdie.
my fah-ay-vorite colwor is buh-lue, and my fah-ay-vorite aminal is a birdie.
Some of the epenthesis in the sentence has hyphens around the new sound put into the word, and some just jams a letter in like it's always meant to be there. Both are correct: the difference is that fambily and colwor add a sound to an existing syllable, but buh-lue and fah-ay-vorite add both a sound and another syllable to the word. The first is a result of assimilation while the second is infixation.*
Look at the purple word in the example for a second. This isn't epenthesis because no sounds are getting added—just switched around. Two sounds getting inverted in a word is called metathesis. Metathesis happens when you aks (or ax) someone a question instead of ask or you pick up a perscription (or perskripshun) rather than a prescription. With some exceptions (like pasghetti and flutterby), metathesis is easily mistaken by readers and editors as typos, so writers using it often change the spelling of the word into an eggcorn (eye spelling) so it's more obviously intentional. When metathesis swaps sounds between multiple words (primarily the first sounds), this is a spoonerism.
There's also the matter of sounds themselves. Typically. sounds have a matching onomatopoeia, or a word meant to replicate a specific sound when pronounced correctly. Bang, pow, and thud are obvious, but words like chime, yawn, cough, burp, uh, and flip-flop are also onomatopoeia. Some sounds that don't have an established onomatopoeia can invent their own: Marvel Comics invented thwip for the sound of Spiderman's web shooters, snikt for the protrusion and retraction of Wolverine's claws, and bamf for Nightcrawler's teleportation. Not to be outdone, DC created paf for the deployment of Batman's grappling hook and tt for the disdainful vocal sound someone makes when they don't approve of something. As sounds can be short or long, onomatopoeia are frequently elongated through fermata.
Look at the purple word in the example for a second. This isn't epenthesis because no sounds are getting added—just switched around. Two sounds getting inverted in a word is called metathesis. Metathesis happens when you aks (or ax) someone a question instead of ask or you pick up a perscription (or perskripshun) rather than a prescription. With some exceptions (like pasghetti and flutterby), metathesis is easily mistaken by readers and editors as typos, so writers using it often change the spelling of the word into an eggcorn (eye spelling) so it's more obviously intentional. When metathesis swaps sounds between multiple words (primarily the first sounds), this is a spoonerism.
There's also the matter of sounds themselves. Typically. sounds have a matching onomatopoeia, or a word meant to replicate a specific sound when pronounced correctly. Bang, pow, and thud are obvious, but words like chime, yawn, cough, burp, uh, and flip-flop are also onomatopoeia. Some sounds that don't have an established onomatopoeia can invent their own: Marvel Comics invented thwip for the sound of Spiderman's web shooters, snikt for the protrusion and retraction of Wolverine's claws, and bamf for Nightcrawler's teleportation. Not to be outdone, DC created paf for the deployment of Batman's grappling hook and tt for the disdainful vocal sound someone makes when they don't approve of something. As sounds can be short or long, onomatopoeia are frequently elongated through fermata.
Seeing isn't believing... it's hearing
Spice is the variety of life, and sonance is that spice when it comes to our spoken language. Speakers adjust their own mode of speaking all the time. There are dialect coaches that train people how to sound like they're from a certain region or to lose their natural accent. Comedians and late-night hosts mimic the speech patterns of politicians and popular figures to get a laugh (this is called ethopoeia). Meanwhile, the speakers and writers that are being mimicked work for years to develop a signature style of speaking and writing.
In your own writing, play with how words sound to develop your own voice. Read your work aloud and adjust until it sounds like you on your best day. While analytic texts require a lack of bias and an objective view, this does not mean you can't use some of these principles to make your writing more dynamic and interesting. Essayists Mary Roach, John Green, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace all have distinct styles. So can you.
Literary writing offers an additional challenge—not only do each of your characters need their own style of speaking, but they also need a voice that is different from yours (with the sole exception of a narrator). This may seem difficult at first, but use the different techniques here to give each character a little spice:
In your own writing, play with how words sound to develop your own voice. Read your work aloud and adjust until it sounds like you on your best day. While analytic texts require a lack of bias and an objective view, this does not mean you can't use some of these principles to make your writing more dynamic and interesting. Essayists Mary Roach, John Green, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace all have distinct styles. So can you.
Literary writing offers an additional challenge—not only do each of your characters need their own style of speaking, but they also need a voice that is different from yours (with the sole exception of a narrator). This may seem difficult at first, but use the different techniques here to give each character a little spice:
- Uh, you could, um, have a character speak with, you know, a bunch of onomatopoeic vocal tics to show, like, their discomfort.
- You could also use very cheugy, discordant short words to totes make how a person yaps off-putting to readers.
- There's also the possibility that you could provide a character with smooth, euphonious sentences with a warm tone and prolific lexicon to elevate them above others.
- Mabbe switch out da same weddas to give a chawictah a wealistic speech impedimen' wike a wisp, studda, or gwide.
Footnotes
*Epenthesis can be further classified on where the additional sound is added (add to the first syllable as in buh-lue, that's prothesis; last syllable as in birdie, paragoge) or on what kind of sound is added (add a vowel sound as in fah-ay-vorite, it's anaptyxis; consonant sound as in fambily, excrescence).
**The term partial reduplication implies that there is also exact reduplication. where a word is said twice to emphasize or clarify: go-go, yo-yo, gaga, so-so, knock knock. Sometimes exact reduplication is sometimes described as "baby talk" because babies naturally reduplicate words as they learn to speak: mama, dada, baba, no-no, bye-bye. Words can even come in between the reduplicated words: walk the walk, talk the talk, naming names, crème de la crème. A special kind of exact reduplication is contrastive reduplication, where a word is duplicated to turn a word into its opposite: I like him, but I don't like-like him; she's rich, but not rich-rich; I took the last one—sorry, not sorry. Note that these duplications are only negative because of the presence of not and could be regular exact reduplicates depending on context: Oh, so you like-like him; Jay Gatsby is, like, rich-rich; I really mean it—I'm sorry-sorry this time.
***These two quotes are from the biggest face turn in literature, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The first is from Chapter 3 when Darcy first meets Elizabeth and rudely dismisses her. The second is from Chapter 58 after Darcy has reunited Elizabeth's sister Jane with Mr. Bingley, saved the reputation of another of her sisters Lydia, and Elizabeth has heard wonderful things about Darcy from his staff.
*Epenthesis can be further classified on where the additional sound is added (add to the first syllable as in buh-lue, that's prothesis; last syllable as in birdie, paragoge) or on what kind of sound is added (add a vowel sound as in fah-ay-vorite, it's anaptyxis; consonant sound as in fambily, excrescence).
**The term partial reduplication implies that there is also exact reduplication. where a word is said twice to emphasize or clarify: go-go, yo-yo, gaga, so-so, knock knock. Sometimes exact reduplication is sometimes described as "baby talk" because babies naturally reduplicate words as they learn to speak: mama, dada, baba, no-no, bye-bye. Words can even come in between the reduplicated words: walk the walk, talk the talk, naming names, crème de la crème. A special kind of exact reduplication is contrastive reduplication, where a word is duplicated to turn a word into its opposite: I like him, but I don't like-like him; she's rich, but not rich-rich; I took the last one—sorry, not sorry. Note that these duplications are only negative because of the presence of not and could be regular exact reduplicates depending on context: Oh, so you like-like him; Jay Gatsby is, like, rich-rich; I really mean it—I'm sorry-sorry this time.
***These two quotes are from the biggest face turn in literature, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The first is from Chapter 3 when Darcy first meets Elizabeth and rudely dismisses her. The second is from Chapter 58 after Darcy has reunited Elizabeth's sister Jane with Mr. Bingley, saved the reputation of another of her sisters Lydia, and Elizabeth has heard wonderful things about Darcy from his staff.