The Latin four-fold classification--later adopted by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas--originates in much older Greek philosophy. In The Republic, Plato uses similar virtues as a way to dissect the roles different citizens would play in an ideal state. Cf. pietas.

CARPE DIEM: Literally, the phrase is Latin for "seize the day," from carpere (to pluck, harvest, or grab) and the accusative form of die (day). The term refers to a common moral or theme in classical literature that the reader should make the most out of life and should enjoy it before it ends. Poetry or literature that illustrates this moral is often called poetry or literature of the "carpe diem" tradition. Examples include Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," and Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." Cf. Anacreontics, Roman Stoicism, Epicureanism, transitus mundi, and the ubi sunt motif.

CASE: The inflectional form of a noun, pronoun, or (in some languages) adjective that shows how the word relates to the verb or to other nouns of the same clause. For instance, them is the objective case of they, and their is the possessive case of they. Common cases include the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative, the vocative, and the instrumental forms. Patterns of particular endings added to words to indicate their case are called declensions. Click here for expanded information.

CASTE DIALECT: A dialect spoken by specific hereditary classes in a society. Often the use of caste dialect marks the speaker as part of that particular class.

CATACHRESIS (Grk. "misuse"): A completely impossible figure of speech or an implied metaphor that results from combining other extreme figures of speech such as anthimeria, hyperbole, synaesthesia, and metonymy. The results in each case are so unique that it is hard to state a general figure of speech that embodies all of the possible results. It is far easier to give examples. For instance, Hamlet says of Gertrude, "I will speak daggers to her." A man can speak words, but no one can literally speak daggers. In spite of that impossibility, readers know Shakespeare means Hamlet will address Gertrude in a painful, contemptuous way. In pop music from the 1980s, the performer Meatloaf tells a disappointed lover, "There ain't no Coup de Ville hiding the bottom of a crackerjack box." The image of a luxury car hidden as a prize in the bottom of a tiny cardboard candybox emphasizes how unlikely or impossible it is his hopeful lover will find such a fantastic treasure in someone as cheap, common, and unworthy as the speaker in these lyrics. Sometimes the catachresis results from stacking one impossibility on top of another. Consider these examples:

Catachresis often results from hyperbole and synaesthesia. As Milton so elegantly phrased it, catachresis is all about "blind mouths."

A special subtype of catachresis is abusio, a mixed metaphor that results when two metaphors collide. For instance, one U. S. senator learned of an unlikely political alliance. He is said to have exclaimed, "Now that is a horse of a different feather." This abusio is the result of two metaphors. The first is the cliché metaphor comparing anything unusual to "a horse of a different color." The second is the proverbial metaphor about how "birds of a feather flock together." However, by taking the two dead metaphors and combining them, the resulting image of "a horse of a different feather" truly emphasizes how bizarre and unlikely the resulting political alliance was. Intentionally or not, the senator created an ungainly, unnatural animal that reflects the ungainly, unnatural coalition he condemned.

Purists of languages often scrowl at abusio with good reason. Too commonly abusio is the result of sloppy writing, such as the history student who wrote "the dreadful hand of totalitarianism watches all that goes on around it and growls at its enemies." (It would have been better to stick with a single metaphor and state "the eye of totalitarianism watches all that goes on around it and glares at its enemies." We should leave out the mixed imagery of watchful hands growling at people; it's just stupid and inconsistent.) However, when used intentionally for a subtle effect, abusio and catachresis can be powerful tools for originality.

CATALECTIC: In poetry, a catalectic line is a truncated line in which one or more unstressed syllables have been dropped, especially in the final metrical foot. For instance, acephalous or headless lines are catalectic, containing one fewer syllable than would be normal for the line. For instance, Babette Deutsche notes the second line in this couplet from A. E. Housman is catalectic:

And if my ways are not as theirs,
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