Sunday Word: Aposiopesis

[sallymn]

aposiopesis [ap-uh-sahy-uh-pee-sisl-kawr]

noun:
a sudden breaking off in the midst of a sentence, as if from inability or unwillingness to proceed; the leaving of a thought incomplete usually by a sudden breaking off (as in "his behavior was - but I blush to mention that")

Examples:

"I can’t even" indicates a speaker or writer is just on the

Comments

[spikesgirl58]

I do that all the time, but I honestly think it has more to do with attention span than anything else...

[full_metal_ox]

All sorts of people never exposed to the sort of highfalutin’ education that bestows knowledge of those sesquipedalian Latinate terms use rhetorical devices all the dang time- they’re what argument and persuasion are made of, and instruction in their existence and use would help to foster critical thinking (although a more up-to-date terminology would be in order.)

They spoke in fragments and ellipses, in periphrastics and aposiopesis, in a style abundant in chiasmus, metonymy, meiosis, oxymoron, and zeugma; their dazzling rhetorical techniques left him baffled and uncomfortable, which beyond much doubt was their intention.

Welcome to Internet meme culture.

[sallymn]

I admit, I don't know most of 'em, even when I use the thing they describe...

[full_metal_ox]

My point being that Lord Macaulay, in being snootily dismissive of his culture’s admittedly classist educational system, was himself committing classist collateral damage: the peasants have been doing this stuff, automatically and intuitively, long before Aristotle, let alone Oxbridge, codified it!

(Which is one reason I love the likes of Urban Dictionary and TV Tropes, as regularly refreshed bodies of descriptive rather than prescriptive folkademia.)

[sallymn]

I use it quite a bit in writing, have to be careful that it doesn't leave the reader too much at sea to the meaning, but when it works, it's great.

[spikesgirl58]

Exactly. There is nothing I have as little respect for as writers who throw in huge words in an attempt to show everyone just how clever they are. If the word is best suited for the moment, then use it, but don't do it to show off.

I have no patience for those pompous gits.