Definition:
Adding words or phrases to further clarify or specify a statement already made.
See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "explanation"Examples and Observations:
- "I moved into a monastic four-room floor-through on Seventy-fifth Street. 'Monastic' is perhaps misleading here, implying some chic severity; until after I was married and my husband moved some furniture in, there was nothing at all in those four rooms except a cheap double mattress and box springs, ordered by telephone the day I decided to move, and two French garden chairs lent me by a friend who imported them."
(Joan Didion, "Goodbye to All That." Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968) - "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of--and the allegations by--people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble--that means not tell the truth."
(George W. Bush, on an Amnesty International report on prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Washington, D.C., May 31, 2005) - "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight."
(Federal xpress advertising slogan) - "Epexegesis arises from the fluid condition of language, in which the thought still moves, while it is being expressed, and also from the redundant tendency of Greek, in which symmetry is often sacrificed to fullness and clearness. The act of expression will often suggest some new aspect or point of view, which is added to the construction by an afterthought."
(Lewis Campbell, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments. Clarendon Press, 1871) - "Helvetica is a typeface, or more appropriately, the typeface of the 20th century."
(Kit Roane, "A Typeface for All Time." U.S. News, August 13, 2007) - "From the initial claims of WMD to the foolish presidential insistence that we need to 'stay the course,' which, he said in a depressingly redundant explanation, 'means, "Keep doing what you’re doing,"' we have become accustomed to a certain suspension of reality in the discussion of war and its accompanying issues."
(editorial in National Catholic Reporter, March 19, 2006)
Pronunciation: ee-PEK-si-gee-sis
Also Known As: explanatio
