ecphrastic
Sep. 17th, 2025 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordecphrastic or ekphrastic (ek-FRAS-tik) - adj., containing a vivid literary description of a work of visual art; clear, lucid.
That last sense appears rarely in dictionaries, though to be fair this word itself appears rarely in dictionaries, in contrast to ecphrasis, the description itself. A famous example ecphrasis is Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," though I'm just as fond of Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts." Like many terms from rhetoric (for literary works are all rhetorical acts) this comes from Ancient Greek ekphrastikós, adjectival form of ékphrasis, description, from ekphrázō, describe, from ek-, out (alternate form of ex-) + phrázō, explain/point out.
---L.
That last sense appears rarely in dictionaries, though to be fair this word itself appears rarely in dictionaries, in contrast to ecphrasis, the description itself. A famous example ecphrasis is Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," though I'm just as fond of Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts." Like many terms from rhetoric (for literary works are all rhetorical acts) this comes from Ancient Greek ekphrastikós, adjectival form of ékphrasis, description, from ekphrázō, describe, from ek-, out (alternate form of ex-) + phrázō, explain/point out.
---L.
