The Dead: Zeugma

This is one of my favorite websites: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Rhetoric is such a powerful and beautiful subject to study; an increased awareness of any of these techniques is guaranteed to approve your writing, no matter your experience. Plus, the more you have tucked in your literary tool belt, the more interesting, flexible, and effective your writing will be.

Rhetoric, admittedly, can be a little intimidating at first. Few rhetorical tools have English names; however, many such tools are already familiar to us. Take "zeugma," for example. Zeugma simply means that one part of speech is animating multiple other parts of speech.

Here's one of the first lines from "The Dead" by James Joyce. In the story, the two hostesses are bustling about, ensuring that the final preparations are in place for their annual party:

"Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come."

Let's take a closer look. To help the reader feel the mild frenzy taking place, the compound subject, Miss Kate and Miss Julia, is animated by a number of different verbs. In one sentence, the author writes that Miss Kate and Miss Julia are gossiping, laughing, fussing, walking, peering, and calling. One subject, multiple verbs. That's zeugma! (Diazeugma, to be exact.)

How can you better incorporate zeugma into your own writing?