I have a theory that music listeners fall into one of two camps: The first values catchy melodies and harmonies, while the second is drawn to the poetry of lyrics. I’m firmly in the latter camp. Recently, while immersed in the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, I found a line that scratched my wordplay-loving itch. In the song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” she sings, “You crashed my party and your rental car.”
This line exemplifies a zeugma (pronounced “ZOOG-muh”), a rhetorical device that modifies two different nouns using one word (usually a verb or an adjective). Here, “crashed” applies to both “party” and “rental car,” linking the emotional turmoil of an uninvited guest with the literal disaster of crashing a rental car. The zeugma emphasizes the chaos caused by this individual, creating a vivid image that wouldn’t be as powerful if it were expressed in two separate lines.
The use of zeugmas is nothing new. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen wielded this tool during an interaction between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy: “Yet time and her aunt moved slowly — and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tête-à-tête was over.” In this instance, Austen illustrates that while Elizabeth’s aunt physically moves slowly, time also drags on figuratively, heightening the awkwardness of her conversation with Mr. Darcy.
A few decades later, Mark Twain employed the device in one of his most memorable lines from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: “They covered themselves with dust and glory.” Here, “covered” is used literally with “dust” and figuratively with “glory,” making the phrase more engaging because of this union.
“Zeugma” itself is pulled directly from the Greek zeugma, meaning “that which is used for joining.” If you incorporate this tool in your writing, use it judiciously. A well-placed zeugma can add flair, emphasis, or humor, but it demands more from readers. Overuse can lead to confusion or fatigue, so use it sparingly — just as Swift, Austen, and Twain have masterfully demonstrated.
