May 06, 2021

Hendiadys in Tibetan

First I reproduce verbatim from Merriam-Webster’s: “William Shakespeare often used hendiadys. For example, his character Macbeth, speaking of the passage of life, says ‘It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.’ For Shakespeare, the construction ‘sound and fury’ was more effective than ‘furious sound.’ The word hendiadys is a modification of the Greek phrase hen dia dyoin. Given that hen dia dyoin literally means ‘one through two,’ it’s a perfect parent for a word that describes the expression of a single concept using two words, as in the phrase ‘rough and tough.’ As you can imagine, hendiadys is a common element in everyday speech and writing.”

Michael Hahn, “Striving for Perfection: On the Various Ways of Translating Sanskrit into Tibetan.” Pacific World 3 (9), 2007, pp. 123–149. On p. 139, Hahn speaks of this figure of speech called “hendiadys.” 

I wish to add some of my own examples in Tibetan: sangs rgyas, byang chub, zhe sdang, ’dod chags, skam chags, etc. There would be many more.

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