Word of the Day: epizeuxis

epizeuxis (n)

Repeating words in succession; emphatic repetition.

"'That's an epizeuxis,' I said to a young actress one day in rehearsal. 'A what?' she sputtered, taken aback. 'An epizeuxis,' I reiterated quietly. 'Gesundheit,' she replied, deftly mocking me."
--Scott Kaiser, Shakespeare's Wordcraft

Edgar Allan Poe was the master of this, as in "The Bells":

....To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells --
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Have you ever noticed that if you repeat a word enough, either aloud or just in your head, it ceases to have any meaning and just becomes a sound, or it starts to mean something other than you thought it did? This happens with names, too. As a child, when I was bored, I would sometimes repeat my name to myself until it became something else: my call, mic all, my kull, my colgates, my call: eights....

I was a strange kid.