What is "rhetorical"

Usage examples of "rhetorical".

It is not a guarded doctrinal statement, but an unstudied, rhetorical illustration of the affiliation of the sinful and unhappy generations of the past with their offending progenitor, Adam, of the believing and blessed family of the chosen with their redeeming head, Christ.

The identities of nature would be presented to the imagination as though spelled out letter by letter, and the spontaneous shift of words within their rhetorical space would reproduce, with perfect exactitude, the identity of beings with their increasing generality.

Its treatises were mostly rhetorical gobbledygook that provided little basis for concrete action.

Certainly this much was obvious: that long, excessively flowery, rhetorical speeches about the reform of the magistrature were not going to alter this monument in a hurry.

There could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up with a rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that which I have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon.

All that can be said is, that Cassiodorus must have formed his collection of State-papers either from rough drafts in his own possession, or from copies preserved in the public archives, and that, from whichsoever source he drew, the names in that source had not been preserved: a striking comment on the rhetorical unbusinesslike character of the Royal and Imperial Chanceries of that day, in which words were deemed of more importance than things, and the flowers of speech which were showered upon the performer of some piece of public business were preserved, while the name of the performer was forgotten.

The art magazine told me that when abstract expressionism reflected utter disenchantment with the dream it still reverted to rhetorical simplifications even in its impiety, and that it is not a unified stylistic entity because of its advocacy of alien ideas on the basis of a homiletic approach to experience.

Seguier were confronted with two other groups within the court who used sheer rhetorical force to seize the political initiative and to stigmatize collaboration with the government as a betrayal of Parlementaire tradition.

Mr Streit gives a looser, more rhetorical statement - a more idealistic statement, shall we say?

Extra-Legal Devices It is, of course, a rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity.

Known as far and away the most promising orator among the younger men, like the dead Crassus Orator he affected the Asianic style, and was as gracefully calculated in his gestures as he was golden of voice, language, and rhetorical devices.

The datastore offered up an answer, something about the concept of a rhetorical question, but Caliban ignored the information, mentally brushed it away.

Even before the daughters have spoken, or refused to speak, the trajectory of their love, there is this transgression: the commodified landscape is sliced up and parcelled out to the highest rhetorical bidder.

From that moment a veiled struggle began between the two, the Directoire attempting to reduce the power and influence of its general, Bonaparte constantly appealing from the Directoire to the public by rhetorical accounts of his victories and proceedings.

Believing this to be part of the campaign against him, the choleric Minnesotan replied in the house with a remarkable rhetorical display which greatly entertained the members but did not increase their respect for him.