| "Rhopal: This obscure but fascinating term refers to a line of poetry whose
words increase by one syllable as they go along" -- Sean Francis, Literature: Become an overnight expert |  |
A rhopal? Syllabic augmentation subsequentially.
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What is a rhopal? Why?? How do I rate a rhopal? The website has bugs! What should I do? Are you serious about the legal stuff? What's the deal with the dictionary? What is a rhopal? This is the definition I first came across, from the book in the "Know It All" series Literature: Become an overnight expert by Sean Francis, 1996: Rhopal: From the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898: Rhopal’ic Verse (wedgs-verse). Why?? I came across the above definition while reading the book. And I thought to myself, I could write a six-word rhopal... So, two hours later it's 2 am, and I'm obsessively counting syllables. Yes, I'd had some success, but it was 2:15 am, and I wasn't sleeping, and all I had to show for it were a couple of odd sentences. Or did I? Instead of viewing this as a compulsive waste of time, why not reframe it and show myself as persuing a muse of creative endeavors of the artistic sort? So I decided to send the fruit of my labors out as an email. But at this point, as I was about to intrude into other people's lives my dubious attempts at a form they had probably never even heard of, I needed a reality check into the legitimacy of the form. And I found none. (This was 2:30 in the morning, and either I or Google might not have been functioning too stably -- I still blame Google -- because I have since found a wealth of links: search for "rhopalic".) So at 2:45 am, I am facing the realization that I might just have wasted three hours of my life obsessively counting syllables to come up with these things that this guy who wrote my book obviously just made up to pad out the contents of his book. It's like I've got a reel of flight line, a bucket of prop wash, and a bag of snipe. Nobody is gonna be impressed with my rhopals because nobody is gonna know what the heck they are! ...Or are they? Regardless of whether the form really exists or is just a cruel joke, it could exist: the definition is reasonable within the bounds of reality, and I have in fact come up with some pretty good examples if I do think so myself (it was 3:00 am after all). In fact, why not promote this form, such that ipso facto the rhopal will exist, even if it's only because my promoting it made it so? Hence this website. ...Well, sort of. Really it's because this has been a whole lot of fun. The rhopalic form is fun. And I'd like to share the fun. Enjoy the website. How do I rate a rhopal? You move your mouse over the row of smiley faces after a rhopal, and click on the corresponding smiley face to the rating you want to give, from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). You can also click on the frowny face to vote to disqualify the rhopal if the rhopal's syllable count is off. You can only rate any given rhopal once. Ratings get averaged to determine a rhopal's rating. And yes Timmy: the system is fairly casual so it is possible to stuff the ballot box. We rely on your discretion not to bother. In order to see your new rating as it affects the rhopal's overall rating, you will need to refresh the page (this is just for you to see it -- your rating is applied as soon as you make it). Reasons you might not be able to rate a rhopal: If you are a browser luddite -- excuse me: purist -- and don't believe in any of that durn fangled cookiescript java stuff, you can still view this site -- you just can't partake in the rating fun. (Being in many ways a luddite myself, this is in no way meant pejoratively.) Jump to a random rhopal and start rating now! The website has bugs! What should I do? Tell me about them! karl@rhopal.org You can write to me about non bug related issues too, if you like; it gets lonely counting syllables at 4 am... Are you serious about the legal stuff? I doubt it will ever come to that. But on the bizarre off-chance that the popularity of this site takes off, I figure I'll have my bases covered. I think the terms are common sense: if you submit a rhopal, obviously you want it displayed on this site, so you are giving permission to do that by submitting it. I ask for your email so that if I ever (ha!) need to contact you regarding reprinting your rhopal, I can. Not supplying an email means you give me further reprinting and republishing rights, since I won't be able to contact you to ask. If you don't want this, but you still don't want to give an email address, I give the option of entering "reserved" in the email field so that you explicitly don't give me republishing rights beyond the website. Reasonable, right? Anyway, the whole thing might be moot since it is not clear that a rhopal is creative enough to transcend being a mere short phrase and thus merit copyrightability. As I wrote, only semi-facetiously: This poem's brevity undoubtedly epitomizes incontrovertible quasijurisprudential uncopyrightability. On the other hand, see this link -- they aren't rhopals, but they are pretty short. What's the deal with the dictionary? The dictionary used in this site is the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by the C. & G. Merriam Co., Springfield, Mass., under the direction of Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D. It is now in the public domain. I took an electronic marked-up plain text version and parsed it into a database, headwords and definitions. The electronic version was a first typing, and as such may contain many typos -- I have not edited for typos. The nice thing about this dictionary for my purposes (besides it existing in the public domain) is that the headwords are nicely divided into syllables. However, please bear in mind a couple of things: First, these divisions are written separation points, and may or may not correspond to pronounced syllables (how many syllables in vegetable or comfortable?). Second, this dictionary is 97 years old, documenting usage mostly from the 19th century -- the language has changed since then! Thirdly, this dictionary documents North American -- particularly New England -- usage. Use it advisedly. Too bad for the furtherance of the rhopalic form that the nice contemporary pronunciation database that Merriam-Webster has is neither in the public domain nor searchable on their public site. ;^p |
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copyright © 2003 by Karl Wagenführ, all rights reserved
all rhopals copyright their respective owners
all rhopals copyright their respective owners