Hendiadys

Hendiadys (/hɛnˈdaɪ.ədɨs/; a Latinized form of the Greek phrase ἓν διὰ δυοῖν, hèn dià duoîn, "one through two") is a figure of speech used for emphasis — "The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination". The basic idea is to use two words linked by the conjunction "and" instead of the one modifying the other.

English names for hendiadys include two for one and figure of twinnes.

Use and effect

The typical result of a hendiadys is to transform a noun-plus-adjective into two nouns joined by a conjunction. For example, "sound and fury" (from act V, scene 5 of Macbeth) seems to offer a more striking image than "furious sound". In this example, as typically, the subordinate idea originally present in the adjective is transformed into a noun in and of itself. Another example is Dieu et mon droit, present in the coat of arms of the United Kingdom. In fact, hendiadys is most effective in English when the adjective and noun form of the word are identical. Thus "the cold wind went down the hall" becomes "the cold and the wind went down the hall". Fowler says that try and...for try to...is a "true example" of hendiadys.^[1] The conjunction may be elided: This coffee is nice and hot can become "This is nice hot coffee"; in both cases one is saying that the coffee is hot to a nice degree, not that the coffee itself is nice.

When hendiadys fails in its effects, it can sound merely redundant. For example, cum amicitia atque pace, "with friendship and peace" is often translated instead as "with peaceful friendship".

"He came despite the rain and weather" instead of "He came despite the rainy weather".

In classical and biblical literature

Hendiadys is often used in Latin poetry. There are many examples in Virgil's Aeneid, e.g., Book 1, line 54: vinclis et carcere, literally translated as "with chains and prison" but the phrase means "with prison chains".

One of the most famous lines of Juvenal's Satires is panem et circenses, commonly translated as "bread and circuses", which describes the only joy of the Roman people, and has now developed into a common idiom to denote mindless amusement. Similarly this is parodied by Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols: "There is an artist after my own heart modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art - panem et circen".

In Leviticus 25:47, the Hebrew says ger v'toshav, literally translated as "the alien and the resident", but the phrase means a "resident alien".

In Lamentations 2:9, the Hebrew says ibbad v'shibar, literally translated as "ruined and broken", but the phrase means "totally destroyed".

Mark 2:25 has "in need and hungry" which Richard Young considers hendiadys for "very hungry" but Wayne Leman suggests is instead an example of "semantic intensification due to Hebraic synonymous parallelism".^[2] "The kingdom, the power and the glory" (from the Lord's Prayer) extends the principle, transforming the idea of a "glorious, powerful kingdom" into a sequence of three nouns joined by a conjunction.

In The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, it occurs at 4.1.36, when Shylock says, "to have the due and forfeit of my bond".

See also

Look up hendiadys in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Hendiatris, one through three
• Litotes, a form of understatement for emphasis
• Contrast with merism, a figure of speech in which a whole is indicated by a brief enumeration of parts

References

Further reading

• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. p. 678. ISBN 0-674-36250-0. 
• Wright, George T. (1981). "Hendiadys and Hamlet". Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 96 (2): 168–93. 
• Wallace, Daniel B. (1996). Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan. pp. 276–7. ISBN 0-310-21895-0.