ellipsis

noun [ɪˈlɪpsɪs]

pronunciation

Editorial team; lemma absent from CMUdict (pipeline/ipa-en.mjs: ellipsis BRAK); derived from CMU ellipse IH0 L IH1 P S → /ɪˈlɪps/ plus -is; stress from Webster El*lip"sis; confirm with a phonetician; no frequency figure, open source

Ellipsis names a syntax and rhetoric figure: conscious skipping of wording that context already supplies; the geometric ellipse foils a closed curve, not this card.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Definitions

ling. / rhet. / gram. Syntactic and rhetorical figure: the speaker or writer deliberately leaves out a word or words that context already supplies. Axis sits at that omission. The geometric ellipse (closed curve from a cone) is another card. Mere emotional breaking-off of speech is a neighbour, not a synonym of this label.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
hist. lex. Arct 1921: Elipsa covers a closed curve (cone, astron.) and also skipping a lexeme inside a clause; Eliptyczny also in grammar and logic: uttered with omission. Brückner skips. Webster ELLIPSIS: (1) Gram. omission figure; (2) Geom. ellipse [Obs.]. Skeat: Gk. ἔλλειψις (a coming short; also a word left out).

source
Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Elipsa; Eliptyczny); A. Brückner 1927 (no elips*); Webster 1913 (ELLIPSIS); W. W. Skeat 1910 (ELLIPSE / ellipsis), open source
didact. / rhet. In class, ellipsis keeps deliberate omission beside anaphora, epiphora, apostrophe, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, metaphor, irony, antithesis, oxymoron, hyperbole, simile, syntax, grammar, rhetoric, and semantics. Borders among deliberate omission, casual speech economy, and the geometric ellipse need review.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
colloq. Loose talk may dump every oval curve or every cut-off sentence under this label. This card keeps one axis: intentional gap where context fills the missing lexemes. Foils: geometric ellipse, apostrophe (address), anaphora, epiphora, onomatopoeia. Apart from a plain shortcut without the figure.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Examples

Webster under ELLIPSIS (Gram.) cites omission of words obviously understood (the virtues I admire for the virtues which I admire); that is syntactic ellipsis, not a cone curve.

source
Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ELLIPSIS), open source
Morning drill ran on deliberate omission of a predicate or pronoun made obvious by context; the geometric ellipse returned on the curve side, apostrophe on the second-person address side, anaphora on the opening-lexeme side.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Source shelf: Arct Elipsa (1921) with both geometric and omission axes, Webster ELLIPSIS (1913) with the grammatical sense first, Skeat 1910 (Gk. ἔλλειψις), Brückner with no elips* lemma.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
A worksheet that stamped every oval curve as rhetorical ellipsis erased the split between an omission figure and a cone curve.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Board labels: ellipsis (omission) | geometric ellipse | apostrophe | anaphora | epiphora | onomatopoeia | syntax, keeping the omission figure apart from the curve, address, lexeme, sound echo, and the syntax domain.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Usage

Casual notes may brand any oval curve or cut-off sentence as ellipsis with no axis. Seminar peels layers: purposeful leaving-out of context-supplied words; geometric ellipse as curve foil; apostrophe as address foil; anaphora and epiphora as lexeme foils. Arct keeps Elipsa on the closed curve and on word omission; Eliptyczny also in grammar. Webster keeps ELLIPSIS on the omission figure (this card) and on an obsolete geometric sense. Skeat traces Greek ἔλλειψις. Brückner skips. Without layers only a hollow slogan about cutting short remains.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Open-book record. In Arct (1921) Elipsa marks a closed curve from an oblique cone section and a star path, and also omission of a word in a sentence. Eliptyczny in grammar and logic: uttered with omission. Webster 1913: ELLIPSIS (El*lip"sis; pl. Ellipses); (1) Gram. omission figure; (2) Geom. An ellipse [Obs.]. Skeat 1910: ELLIPSE / ellipsis from Gk. ἔλλειψις and ἐλλείπειν (to leave in, to come short). Brückner 1927 leaves the Polish lemma blank. Derivation under etymology.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Elipsa; Eliptyczny); Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (ELLIPSIS); W. W. Skeat 1910 (ELLIPSE / ellipsis); A. Brückner 1927 (no lemma), open source

Scholarly English marks deliberate omission of context-obvious words for compression and pathos. Careful editors discard worksheets that treat every geometric ellipse as the rhetorical figure and discard glosses that never name the omission axis. The ellipsis / geometric ellipse / apostrophe / anaphora / epiphora border stays debated in seminars. Chronology of the label stays blank until a primary page is cited. Polish counterpart: elipsa (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Classrooms revisit omission talk among tropes and place syntactic ellipsis next to anaphora, epiphora, apostrophe, alliteration, assonance, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, euphemism, hyperbole, litotes, simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, onomatopoeia, syntax, grammar, rhetoric, and semantics. CMUdict lists ellipse but not ellipsis (editorial IPA /ɪˈlɪpsɪs/). Polish elipsa sits in SGJP. Live neighbours include those tropes. Without the deliberate-omission axis the label collapses into curve talk or plain speech-economy talk.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ELLIPSIS); CMUdict (ellipsis absent, ellipse present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (elipsa present), open source

Word forms

Countable noun: singular ellipsis / plural ellipses (Webster indexes Ellipses under ELLIPSIS). Nearby Webster forms: elliptic / elliptical (a.), elliptically (adv.), ellipticity (n.). CMUdict lemma ellipsis absent; ellipse present.

forms in use

przypadek	forma
singular	ellipsis
plural	ellipses (Webster ELLIPSIS pl. Ellipses)
related adjective (Webster)	elliptic / elliptical (Webster ELLIPTIC; ELLIPTICAL)
related adverb / noun (Webster)	elliptically; ellipticity (Webster)
foil neighbour (Webster)	ellipse (Webster ELLIPSE Geom.; live foil, not this card)

Word forms: Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ELLIPSIS; ELLIPSE; ELLIPTIC; ELLIPTICAL; ELLIPTICALLY; ELLIPTICITY); CMUdict (ellipsis absent, ellipse present) · source

Collocations

syntactic ellipsis

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
ellipsis against geometric ellipse

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
omission of a word

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
rhetorical ellipsis

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
distinguish ellipsis from apostrophe

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Synonyms · Antonyms

Synonyms elipsa (Polish counterpart; SGJP present; Arct Elipsa sense omission; check scope at review), omission of a word (loose descriptive neighbour; Arct Elipsa; Webster ELLIPSIS Gram.; check scope at review), figure of omission (approximation; Skeat ellipsis; Webster ELLIPSIS; check scope at review), leaving out understood words (approximation; Webster ELLIPSIS; check scope at review)

source

Editorial team; facts: SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (elipsa present); M. Arct 1921 (Elipsa), open source

Antonyms full statement without omissions (contrast: spelling out context-obvious words; check scope at review), geometric ellipse (axis contrast: closed cone curve, not omission figure; Webster ELLIPSE; Arct Elipsa geom.; not a clean antonym of the label alone), apostrophe (axis contrast: second-person address to the absent, not word omission; live EN pair; not always a clean antonym)

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Etymology

English ellipsis rests on Webster's ELLIPSIS card: (1) grammatical figure of omission (words obviously understood); (2) obsolete geometric sense (an ellipse); neighbouring cards cover ELLIPSE, ELLIPTIC, ELLIPTICAL, ELLIPTICALLY, ELLIPTICITY. Skeat 1910 treats ELLIPSE / ellipsis as Greek ἔλλειψις (a leaving behind, defect, an ellipse of a word; also the geometric ellipse) from ἐλλείπειν (to leave in, to come short; ἐν + λείπειν). Arct 1921 indexes Elipsa and Eliptyczny. Brückner 1927 does not index elips*. We avoid copying dictionary wording. Polish counterpart: elipsa. Axis of this card: sense 1 (grammar / rhetoric).

source

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (ELLIPSIS; ELLIPSE; ELLIPTIC; ELLIPTICAL), open source

also

W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910 (ELLIPSE / ellipsis), open source

also

M. Arct, Słownik wyrazów obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921 (Elipsa; Eliptyczny), open source

also

A. Brückner, Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, Kraków 1927 (no elips* lemma), open source

Related words

apostrophe , axis foil (second-person address to the absent, not word omission); EN pair already live
anaphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at openings, not omission); EN pair already live
epiphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at closings); EN pair already live
alliteration , trope neighbour (consonant echo); EN pair already live
assonance , trope neighbour (vowel echo); EN pair already live
onomatopoeia , trope neighbour (sound-of-thing echo); EN pair already live
irony , foil along the sense axis (reversal); EN pair already live
antithesis , trope neighbour (opposing members); EN pair already live
oxymoron , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
hyperbole , trope neighbour (overstatement); EN pair already live
litotes , trope neighbour (understatement); EN pair already live
simile , foil along the likeness axis (open pairing with like / as); EN pair already live
metaphor , trope neighbour (transfer); EN pair already live
euphemism , trope neighbour (etiquette softening); EN pair already live
metonymy , trope neighbour (contiguity transfer); EN pair already live
synecdoche , trope neighbour (part for whole); EN pair already live
syntax , domain of sentence structure (ellipsis axis sits in syntax); EN pair already live
grammar , domain of forms and constructions; EN pair already live
rhetoric , domain of tropes; EN pair already live
semantics , sense and reference neighbour; EN pair already live
elipsa , Polish counterpart (SGJP present; Webster ELLIPSIS sense 1)

Related entries

The same entry in Polish: elipsa

Questions and answers

What does ellipsis mean?

It names a syntactic and rhetorical device: the speaker or writer deliberately omits a word or words made obvious by context. The geometric ellipse is a closed cone curve. Apostrophe is second-person address to an absent addressee. Anaphora and epiphora fasten a chain with one lexeme. A plain speech shortcut without the figure fails to replace this card.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

How does ellipsis differ from a geometric ellipse?

Ellipsis on this card keeps the omission of context-obvious words (Arct Elipsa sense omission; Webster ELLIPSIS sense 1 Gram.). A geometric ellipse (Arct Elipsa sense curve; Webster ELLIPSE) is an oval closed line cut from a cone. Figure axis differs from curve axis; casual speech and school shortcuts blur the labels often.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Elipsa); Webster 1913 (ELLIPSIS; ELLIPSE), open source

How does ellipsis differ from apostrophe, anaphora, and epiphora?

Under ellipsis the speaker omits a context-obvious word. Apostrophe (Webster APOSTROPHE; Arct Apostrofa) addresses an absent addressee in the second person. Anaphora (Webster ANAPHORA Rhet.) places a shared lexeme at openings. Epiphora (Webster EPIPHORA Rhet.) places it at closings. Axis foil: omission versus address versus lexeme, not a synonym of the label alone.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ELLIPSIS; APOSTROPHE; ANAPHORA; EPIPHORA); M. Arct 1921 (Elipsa), open source

Where does the word ellipsis come from, and what forms sit with it?

Webster 1913 ties ELLIPSIS to the grammatical omission figure and an obsolete geometric sense; ELLIPSE, ELLIPTIC, ELLIPTICAL, ELLIPTICALLY, ELLIPTICITY sit nearby. Skeat 1910: ELLIPSE / ellipsis (Gk. ἔλλειψις; ἐλλείπειν). Arct 1921: Elipsa; Eliptyczny. Brückner 1927: no lemma. Forms: ellipsis / ellipses (Webster). Editorial IPA: /ɪˈlɪpsɪs/ (CMUdict lacks ellipsis; ellipse is /ɪˈlɪps/). Polish pair: elipsa (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913; CMUdict (ellipsis absent, ellipse present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (elipsa present), open source

Is every omitted word an ellipsis?

No. Any speech shortcut can be plain economy without the figure. Ellipsis holds a deliberate omission of context-obvious words as a syntactic or rhetorical device. Without that axis the label collapses into geometric-ellipse talk, apostrophe talk, or a plain cut-off sentence.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)