The A to Z Challenge Blog 2022: the Letter Z

Well, we’ve made it to the end of the month of April. last day, last post. Mother Nature has been kind and we have sunshine once more to finish on a positive note. I’ve enjoyed sharing quirks from my writing with you as well as my weather challenges. It’s been like speaking to an old friend each day, and I’ve enjoyed it. Some of you will be following my blog from here on in as I follow yours. For others, maybe we’ll meet again next year.

Today’s letter and the last one in the alphabet is Z. In my writing, Z stands for Zeugma. Bet you didn’t think I had one. Neither did I!

Zeugma, which means joining or bonding in Greek, is the act of using one verb to refer to two different objects in an ungrammatical but striking way. While I’ve done this, I’m by no means an expert at it. There’s a fitting example in Shakespeare’s Henry V, when Fluellen cries, “Kill the boys and the luggage.” (Normally, one doesn’t kill their luggage, so it counts a zeugma.) This construction and literary device are extremely common in seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century literature. Here are a few examples.

“If we don’t hang together, we shall hang separately!” (Ben Franklin).
“The queen of England sometimes takes advice in that chamber, and sometimes tea.”
“. . . losing her heart or her necklace at the ball.” (Alexander Pope).
“She exhausted both her audience and her repertoire.” (anonymous)
“She looked at the object with suspicion and a magnifying glass.” (Charles Dickens)
“Miss Bolo went home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair.” (Charles Dickens)
[King Charles I was . . .] “Circled with his royal diadem and the affections of his people.” (Mistress Evelyn)”I fancy you were gone down to cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country” (Goldsmith)
“Her beauty pierced mine eye, her speech my wo[e]ful breast, / Her presence all the powers of my discourse.”

So, there you have it. I’ll pay closer attention to my words and see when I use zeugma in my writing.

I hope you enjoyed this year’s A to Z challenge as much as I did. Find the other Z posts here. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nuoAOJ-BUAXE1Yl2yIArhUHInj902PHVX6_gL4oKiSo/edit#gid=1195767304