Language lesson
We said in a leader item, In praise of . . . Synecdoche, page 28, May 27, that prolepsis means stopping short of a word that the sentence seems to be leading to, as in “Well, I’ll be . . .”. That would be ellipsis or perhaps aposiopesis. Prolepsis involves the idea of anticipation, for example a rhetorical device for anticipating and answering objections (“You may argue that there is not much difference between prolepsis and ellipsis but Fowler maintains . . . “) or the representation that something has taken place before it has happened (“she published the disputed correction on June 21″). Link
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