Prosiopesis

Pronunciation

RP enPR: prÅ'sÄÅpÄ“Ê¹sÄs, IPA: /ËŒpÉ¹É’sÉªÉ™ÊŠËˆpiËsÉªs/,

US enPR: prÅ'siÅpiÊ¹sÄs, IPA: /ËŒpÉ¹É‘sioÊŠËˆpisÉªÌ¶s/,

Origin

Coined in 1917 by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen:

Negation in English and other languages, volume 1, â„– 5, by Otto Jespersen (1917; A.F. HÃ¸st), page 6

Now, when the negative begins a sentence, it is on account of that very position more liable than elsewhere to fall out, by the phenomenon for which I venture to coin the term of prosiopesis (the opposite of what has been termed of old aposiopesis): the speaker begins to articulate, or thinks he begins to articulate, but produces no audible sound (either for want of expiration, or because he does not put his vocal chords in the proper position) till one or two syllables after the beginning of what he intended to say.

pro- ("before") (from the Ancient Greek preposition Ï€ÏÏŒ) + ÏƒÎ¹ÏŽÏ€Î·ÏƒÎ¹Ï‚ (siÅpÄ“sis, "taciturnity") (from ÏƒÎ¹Ï‰Ï€Î¬Ï‰ (siÅpaÅ, "to be silent")) + -ÏƒÎ¹Ï‚, (-sis, suffix forming nouns of action).

â€œprosiopesisâ€ listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)

â€œprosiopesis, n.â€ listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (draft revision, June 2008)

Full definition of prosiopesis

Noun

prosiopesis

(countable and uncountable; plural prosiopesiss)

(grammar) Ellipsis of the beginning of a grammatical construction,

common in informal speech and spontaneous written electronic communication, frequently occurring in stock phrases and interjections.

2003, David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, page 159 (5th Ed.; Wileyâ€“Blackwell; ISBN 0631226648, 9780631226642)Traditional rhetoric was much concerned with the phenomenon of elision, because of the implications for constructing well-formed metrical lines, which would scan well. In rhetorical terminology, an elision in word-

initial position was known as aphaeresis or prosiopesis, in word-medial position as syncope, and in word-final position as apocope. A similar classification was made for the opposite of elision, intrusion.

The students of English were making good progress in getting to grips with the intricacies of informal constructions, peppering their conversations with proverbial idioms and substituting stock phrases like Good morning! and Thank you. with prosiopeses like Morning! and â€›Kyou.''

Antonyms

(intrusion instead of elision) prothesis

Coordinate terms

(forms of word-elision) from word-final position apocope, aposiopesis; from word-medial position syncope, *synsiopesis

Related terms

prosiopetic rare

Synonyms

aphÃ¦resis, procope