Asyndeton
Polysyndeton
to omit conjunctions between clauses to create rhythmic and emphatic effects; from the Greek a 'against' and syndeton 'bound together with'
to add conjunctions to slow up rhythm and produce a solemn effect; from the Greek poly 'many' and syndeton 'bound together with'

Examples

Asyndeton
Shakespeare
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
Joseph Conrad
An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was thick, warm, heavy, sluggish.
Matthew Arnold
They may have it in well-doing, they may have it in learning, they may have it even in criticism.
Aristotle
This is the villain among you who deceived you, who cheated you, who meant to betray you completely.
Polysyndeton
William F. Buckley
In years gone by, there were in every community men and women who spoke the language of duty and morality and loyalty and obligation.
Henry James
I don't care a fig for his sense of justice - I don't care a fig for the wretchedness of London; and if I were young, and beautiful, and clever, and brilliant, and of a noble position, like you, I should care still less.
C.S. Lewis
They all tasted to me like undersexed morons who had blundered or trickled into the wrong beds in automatic response to sexy advertisements, or to make themselves feel modern and emancipated, or to reassure themselves about their virility or their 'normalcy', or even because they had nothing else to do.

Purpose & Usage

Listing Items
Use asyndeton and polysyndeton to list things in exaggerative pathos appeals. These rhythmic and emphatic figures create slightly different effects.
Asyndeton
Polysyndeton
  • speeds up the rhythm of the list
  • invites audiences to continue the unfinished list (the missing final comma seems to extend the list to infinitude)*
  • may rush toward a climax
  • slows down the rhythm of the list
  • creates a heavier and more emphatic delivery that can sound breathless or grand*
  • may majestically conclude with a climax
*Language teachers might reject these seemingly unfinished or elaborate lists. But figures of speech are 'figures' because they figuratively deviate from standard syntax and literal prose. Asyndeton and polysyndeton do in lists what etc. and and so on cannot do: stir our emotions.
We can use asyndeton and polysyndeton for the following purposes. They may also combine with parallelism.
Breathless Enthusiasm
Use polysyndeton to convey breathless enthusiasm for a subject.
Richard Dawkins
Chimps and dogs and bats and cockroaches and people and worms and dandelions and bacteria and galactic aliens are the stuff of biology.
Jane Austen
Herman Melville
Mrs. Hurst and her sister allowed it to be so—but still they admired her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet girl, and one whom they would not object to know more of.
There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher.
Emphasis & Grandeur
Use asyndeton and polysyndeton for grandeur. Both elevate ideas and appear in great works.
King James Bible
Winston Churchill
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
Climax
Use asyndeton and polysyndeton to march toward a powerful climax.
Winston Churchill
Maya Angelou
All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness.
Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly–mostly–let them have their whiteness.
J.F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961
The Lion in Winter, Avco Embassy Pictures, 1968
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
"It's 1183 and we're barbarians. How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war — not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little."