prosiopesis

Definitions

Ellipsis of the beginning of a grammatical construction, common in informal speech and spontaneous written electronic communication, frequently occurring in stock phrases and interjections.

abbreviation, alt-of, countable, ellipsis, uncountable

Examples

“The students of English were making good progress⟳ in getting to grips with the intricacies of informal constructions, peppering their conversations with proverbial idioms and substituting stock⟳ phrases like⟳ “Good morning!” and “Thank⟳ you.” with prosiopeses like⟳ “Morning!” and “‛Kyou.””

“Traditional rhetoric was much concerned with the phenomenon of elision, because of the implications for constructing well-formed metrical lines, which would scan⟳ well. In rhetorical terminology, an elision in word-initial position was known as aphaeresis or prosiopesis, in word-medial position as syncope, and in word-final position as apocope. A similar classification was made for the opposite of elision, intrusion.”

CEFR level