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The list will go from the most common to the least common. In later grades, and on AP exams, you won’t need to remember the names–you can just call it repetition–but naming them now will help you identify them and understand them later.

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As far as the purpose of any instance of repetition, it depends on the context of what is being said and the particular meaning or the message that is being conveyed. Always, however, it is about emphasizing that particular message. For that message, it can especially create or enhance tone and mood.

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Purpose of repetition, continued:

For instance, if a politician repeats the words “hope” and “change,” the message is pretty obvious. Things are bad, they can make it better.

If a speaker repeats associated words like hordes, assault, attack, stealing, you know that fear is trying to be driven into the minds of the audience.

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It’s more nuanced with alliteration, consonance, or assonance, especially with poetry. However, once recognized and learned, this is where your analysis can shine.

So, if the poet or narrator is expressing calmness or happiness, many words will repeat soft consonants: wind, willows, pillow, patter, etc.

Expressing pain or discord, many harsh-sounding patterns will emerge: cracked canvas, grating gusts, acrimonious aching of the ages .

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1. Alliteration: This involves repeating the same sound at the beginning of multiple words in a phrase or sentence. This creates a pleasing rhythm and can be used to draw attention to certain words or phrases.

"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea."

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

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2. Assonance: repeating the same vowel sound in multiple words in a phrase or sentence. This creates a sense of harmony and can be used to create a particular mood or tone.

"Men sell wedding bells."

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

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3. Consonance: This involves repeating the same consonant sound in multiple words in a phrase or sentence. This creates a sense of rhythm and can be used to create a particular mood or tone.

"Melike likes her clean, new bike." (the ‘l’ and ‘k’ sounds)

"The pitter-patter of the rain was a soothing sound." (p’s and s’s)

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4. Anaphora: repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of multiple lines or sentences, creating a strong sense of rhythm emphasis or to convey a particular theme or idea.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." - Martin Luther King Jr.

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5. Epizeuxis or palilogia: the repetition of a single word or phrase in immediate succession.

“O horror, horror, horror!”--Macduff from Shakespeare’s Macbeth

“Alone, alone. All, all alone. Alone on a wide wide sea.” “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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6. Epistrophe (Antistrophe/Epiphora): repeating a word or phrase at the end of multiple lines or sentences, creating a sense of closure or reinforcing a particular idea or theme.

"I'll have my bond! Speak not against my bond! I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond!" - Shylock in The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

“…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” - “Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln

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7. Symploce: a combination of anaphora and epiphora/epistrophe, one word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of a line and another at the end.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? – “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman

“When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it.” – Bill Clinton

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8. Anadiplosis: repeating the last word of a preceding clause or sentence at the beginning of the next clause or sentence, creating a sense of continuity and emphasis and connecting the ideas of the two clauses or sentences.

"The love of wicked men converts to fear, That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both / To worthy danger and deserved death." - Shakespeare, Richard II

"When I give, I give myself." – Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

We will now proceed with violence. Violence will be our battle cry. Our battle cry shall be feared across the globe. The globe, trembling beneath us, will be ours alone. – SCS

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9. Antanaclasis: From the Greek for “bending back,” this is the repetition of a word but using a different meaning each time.

“Your argument is sound, nothing but sound.” In the first instance, Benjamin Franklin implies the argument is solid; in the second, that it’s just noise.”

“To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal.” Shakespeare, Henry V

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10. Antistasis: When antanaclasis (above) goes so far as to incorporate opposite meanings.

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Benjamin Franklin (again) uses “hang” in two directly opposing ways—unity and victory on the one hand and defeat and death on the other.

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11. Polyptoton: the repetition of a word, but in a different grammatical form or case. This repetition creates a rhetorical effect by emphasizing the word's meaning or by drawing attention to its various connotations.

"We would like to contain the uncontainable."

"He dreamed a dream no mortal ever dared to dream before." - Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

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12. Negative-positive restatement: stating an idea twice—first negatively, then with a positive twist.

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

"Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits." —Robert Louis Stevenson

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Identifying some of these in texts

"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings;

How some have been deposed; some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;

All murder'd: for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life,

Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus

Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!"

Shakespeare portrays Death as mocking and ever-present in the lives of kings, waiting within the "hollow crown" that symbolizes their power and authority.