Diacope /daɪˈækəʊpiː/ is a rhetorical term meaning repetition of a word or phrase with one or two intervening words. It derives from a Greek word meaning "cut in two".
"Bond. James Bond." — James Bond
"Put out the light, and then put out the light." — Shakespeare, Othello, Act V, scene 2.
"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! — Richard III
"Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me! — Talbot Rothwell, Carry on Cleo
"They will laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment and his wax." — Edmund Burke, "A Letter to a Noble Lord," 1796
"I knew it. Born in a hotel room—and goddamn it—died in a hotel room." — last words of playwright Eugene O'Neill
"Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." — Dr William Butler (1535-1618), on strawberries, quoted by Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler.
Leo Marks's poem "The Life That I Have", memorably used in the film Odette, is an extended example of diacope:
The life
that I have
Is all
that I have
And the life
that I have
Is yours.
The love
that I have
Of the life
that I have
Is yours and
yours and
yours.
A sleep
I shall have
A rest
I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be
yours and
yours and
yours.
The first line in the poem not to deploy diacope is the one about death being "a pause."
"In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these." — Paul Harvey. This is also an example of an epanalepsis.
