ploce /PLAW-see/. noun. A figure of speech in which a word is emphatically repeated to bring attention to a particular attribute or quality. Latin, from Greek plokē (complication) from plekein (to plait). See also symploce, the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning and end of successive clauses, such as G.K. Chesterton’s “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
Some examples of ploce:
“Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death?” (William Blake)
“I feel that the time is always right to do what is right.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
“How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!” (William Shakespeare)
“How much wider does this wider go?” (anonymous, quoted by Lisa Smartt)
“Give me a break! Give me a break! Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!” (ad jingle)