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1. Using language effectively to please or persuade
    
2. High-flown style; excessive use of verbal ornamentation
   "the rhetoric of his prose";
   - grandiosity, magniloquence, ornateness, grandiloquence
    
3. Study of the technique and rules for using language effectively (especially in public speaking)
    
4. Insincere or vague talk with empty promises etc. that is supposed to impress
   "mere rhetoric";
   - hot air [informal], empty words, empty talk, bluster

Derived forms: rhetorics

Type of: bunk [informal], expressive style, hokum [informal], literary study, meaninglessness, nonsense, nonsensicality, style

Encyclopedia: Rhetoric