1 (of a question) asked only to make a statement or to produce an effect rather than to get an answer:
'Don't you care what I do?' he asked, but it was a rhetorical question.
2 (formal, often disapproving) (of a speech or piece of writing) intended to influence people, but not completely honest or sincere
3 (formal) connected with the art of RHETORIC:
the use of rhetorical devices such as metaphor and irony * rhetorical techniques / structures * She ended her speech with a rhetorical flourish.
rhetorically adverb:
'Do you think I'm stupid?' she asked rhetorically. * a rhetorically structured essay
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of rhetorical come from?
This entry for rhetorical is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is rhetorical a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, rhetorical is tagged as adjective.
Does rhetorical appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — rhetorical appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
