Adynaton is a form of hyperbole that describes something impossible, often used in figures of speech such as “when pigs fly.” It has been used in literature since antiquity and in modern fantasy and superhero stories. Attempts to create literal adynatons have included flying a piglet and creating a lead balloon.
Adynaton is a literary term referring to the creative use of exaggeration. Exaggeration used as a figure of speech, metaphor or description is commonly known as hyperbole. Adynaton is a specific form of hyperbole that describes something impossible. An example is the common English expression “when pigs fly,” which means something like cattle in flight is likely to happen. Equally improbable scenarios have been described in literary works since antiquity and in figures of speech in almost every language.
A number of ancient Greek and Roman writers employed the adynaton, known in Latin as the poetic-sounding impossible. This likely reflects the common use of similar phrases as conversational figures of speech. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is known to have said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Another early use of adynaton was in folktales, where heroic figures were often capable of impossible feats. American frontier folk hero Pecos Bill, for example, could saddle and ride a cyclone like a bucking horse.
A common modern use of adynaton is in figures of speech such as “pigs could fly” or “when hell freezes over”. These English expressions describe the improbability of an event by comparing it to other events that will never happen. This type of expression has parallels in numerous languages around the world. The use of deliberately humorous imagery in these expressions helps to make them more absurd and therefore more memorable.
There are always those who try to literalize these expressions, to physically create an adynaton or an impossible event. In 1909, for example, an early aviator took a piglet for a flight in his biplane to demonstrate that “pigs can fly.” For centuries, religious scholars have speculated that the “eye of the needle” described by Christ was an actual passage rather than a metaphor, but no such passage has been discovered. In a 2008 episode of the TV series Mythbusters, the hosts created a real “lead balloon”. This referred to a popular adynaton for a failed venture, a saying which also inspired the name of the rock band Led Zeppelin.
Literary uses of adynaton include early fictional works such as Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift and Gargantua by Francois Rabelais. In these works, people of gigantic size represent unflattering aspects of humanity itself. Modern fantasy and superhero stories focus on characters who can perform impossible feats, as do older tales of demigods and folk heroes. Romantic poets of the 18th century often compared their depth of feeling to impossible events or actions. Modern uses include the classic rock song “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, in which Jimi Hendrix declares that he will approach a mountain and “cut it down with the edge of my hand”.
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