Meaning

(uncountable, rhetoric) A rhetorical technique in which the speaker or author presents an imaginary speech by a real person, portraying that person's known characteristics and propensities..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable, rhetoric) A rhetorical technique in which the speaker or author presents an imaginary speech by a real person, portraying that person's known characteristics and propensities.
2. (countable, rhetoric) An instance of this technique.

Example Sentences

The situation envisioned is the contest for a prize described in Herodotus 8.123 and cast in the form of ethopoeia.

In ancient narrative literature, ethopoeia is a frequently used literary tool.

This is a reference to a type of drama-based pedagogy called ethopoeia, which formed a central component of the humanist grammar school curriculum.

In their ethopoeias of the ideal lover, de la Torre, Ribera, and Luduefia emphasize, as we have seen, eloquence, good physical proportions, youth, elegance, discretion and honesty.

The speeches in the De Gelesuintha all can be described as ethopoeiae, that is speeches intended to communicate the emotional condition of their speakers.

An ethopoeia is delimited by some few arguments from past, present, and future time, while exhortation, as an hypothesis dealing with acknowledged particulars, takes its amplification from final headings.

One of the most elaborate extant examples of this genre is a speech by Libanius, an ethopoeia of Medea as she is about to kill her children.

Word Forms

• ethopoeiae
• ethopoeias
• ethopoiia

Related Words

When Should You Use Ethopoeia?

Use ethopoeia when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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