His paintings weren't really paintings; they were rhetorical "statements about ideas for paintings."

Olie took it for a rhetorical statement.

A "flat count" of total signing statements would include the rhetorical and political statements as well as the constitutional.

I was just posing a rhetorical statement for the purposes of spurring conversation.

It was a rhetorical statement, as he hired no such people.

Jim Palmer, the Hall of Fame pitcher, said, offering a rhetorical statement.

"The general makes the grand rhetorical statement, and you send the foot soldiers out to deal with the arrows slung by journalists," he said.

It is now time to move from words to actions so that we do not just carry on making purely rhetorical statements.

"What we fear is that things will just go on as they are with a few rhetorical statements."

He seems to actually be thinking up an answer to my rhetorical statement.