[*] 640.
Grammatical Terms
Anacoluthon: a change of construction in the
same sentence, leaving the first part broken or unfinished.
Anastrophe: inversion of the usual order of
words.
Apodosis: the conclusion of a
conditional sentence (see
Protasis
).
Archaism: an adoption of old or obsolete forms.
Asyndeton: omission of conjunctions (§
323.
b).
Barbarism: adoption of foreign or unauthorized
forms.
Brachylogy: brevity of expression.
Crasis: contraction of two vowels into one
(§ 15. 3).
Ellipsis: omission of a word or words necessary
to complete the sense.
Enallage: substitution of one
word or form for another.
Epenthesis: insertion of a
letter or syllable.
Hellenism: use of Greek forms or constructions.
Hendiadys (
ἓν διὰ δυοῖν
): the use of two nouns, with a conjunction, instead of a
single modified noun.
Hypallage: interchange of
constructions.
Hysteron proteron: a reversing of the natural
order of ideas.
This term was applied to cases where the natural sequence of events is
violated in language because the later event is of more importance than
the earlier and so comes first to the mind. This was supposed to be an
artificial embellishment in Greek, and so was imitated in Latin. It is
still found in artless narrative; cf. “Bred and Born in a
Brier Bush” (Uncle Remus).
Metathesis: transposition of letters in a word.
Paragoge: addition of a letter
or letters to the end of a word.
Parenthesis: insertion of a phrase interrupting
the construction.
Periphrasis: a roundabout way of
expression (
circumlocution).
Pleonasm: the use of needless words.
Polysyndeton: the use of an unnecessary number
of copulative conjunctions.
Prolepsis: the use of a word in
the clause preceding the one where it would naturally appear
(
anticipation).
Protasis: a clause introduced by
a conditional expression (
if,
when,
whoever), leading to a conclusion called the
Apodosis
(§ 512).
Syncope: omission of a letter or syllable from
the middle of a word.
Synesis
(
cōnstrūctiō ad
sēnsum
）
: agreement of words according to the
sense, and not the grammatical form (§ 280.
a).
Tmesis: the separation of the
two parts of a compound word by other words (
cutting).
This term came from the earlier separation of prepositions (originally
adverbs) from the verbs with which they were afterwards joined; so in
per ecastor scītus puer,
a very fine boy, egad! As this was supposed to be
intentional, it was ignorantly imitated in Latin; as in
cere- comminuit -brum (
Ennius).
Zeugma: the use of a verb or an
adjective with two different words, to only one of which it strictly
applies (
yoking).
