Sonic Multipliers

       Alliteration in poetry is sound repetition in nearby words that calls attention to those words and makes associations between them.  Such connections also occur in everyday speaking.

       On one PBS NewsHour story about ISIS, several guests were interviewed.   I heard the following in words close to one another:

1. "fierce" and "fearsome":  two different roots [ferus] "wild" and [faer] "fear" but words with sounds that mimicked one another and reenforced each other's meaning;

2.  "contain" and "continue":   both words with the same roots [con] "with" and [tien] "hold," meaning "hold together," an echo going back and forth between them;

3.  "bomb" and "Obama":  here is maybe the most potent sonic connection, inevitably moving the words toward one another in our minds as almost synonymous.

       Similar sounds in words link and create a multiplier effect.