Definition:
(1) One of three equally spaced points ( . . . ) used in writing or printing to indicate the omission of words. Plural, ellipses.
(2) Omission of one or more words, which must be supplied by the listener or reader. Adjective: elliptical or elliptic. See also: Gapping.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "to fall short"Examples and Observations:
- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."
(Plato) - "Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater."
(William Hazlitt) - "Ellipsis can be an artful and arresting means of securing economy of expression. We must see to it, however, that the understood words are grammatically compatible. If we wrote, 'The ringleader was hanged, and his accomplices imprisoned,' we would be guilty of a solecism, because the understood was is not grammatically compatible with the plural subject (accomplices) of the second clause."
(Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999) - "If youth knew, if age could."
(Henri Estienne) - "Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends."
(Virginia Woolf) - "It's generally understood that quotes are excerpts from routinely drabber material. And you'll be well advised not to start or end a quote with an ellipsis."
(Rene Cappon, Associated Press Guide to Punctuation, 2003) - "There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them."
(Virginia Woolf) - "True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love."
(Raymond Queneau)
Pronunciation: ee-LIP-sis
Also Known As: suspension point (definition #1); elliptical expression (definition #2)
