dyfalu

In Welsh poetry, dyfalu is the piling on of comparisons, definition through conceit.  The word also means “to guess” in Welsh, and many poems of dyfalu have an element of guesswork, a fanciful and riddling dimension.  “The art of dyfalu, meaning “to describe” or “to deride,” rests in the intricate development of a series of images and extended metaphors which either celebrate or castigate a person, animal, or object,” the encyclopedia of Celtic Culture explains.  Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poems to the mist and the wind are classic fourteenth-century examples.

That is from Edward Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary, which I am quite enjoying.  There is interesting material on every page and it is written with passion.   A hendiatris is a “figure of speech in which three words are employed to express an idea, as in Thomas Jefferson’s tripartite motto for the Declaration of Independence: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.””  When there are only two words so employed, it is of course a hendiadys.