ABSTRACT
From the Latin Rhetorica, taken from the Greek, ἡ ῥητορική (τέχνη). Kierkegaard spells the word consistently with “Rh,” while in modern Danish it is without an “h.”1 There are two corresponding Danish terms, Talekunst and Veltalenhed. They have approximately the same meaning; however, Veltalenhed could also be translated as “eloquence.” Besides rhetorik Kierkegaard uses two other nouns of the same origin. The first is rhetor (same spelling in Latin and in Danish), which has a Danish equivalent in Talekunstner; the second is “rhetorician” (Rhetoriker), from the Latin rhetoricus. In only one instance does Kierkegaard use the verb rhetoriserer.2
