Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Additional explanation or explanatory material.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Subjoined explanation or elucidation; specifically, in rhetoric, the act of subjoining a word, phrase, clause, or passage in order to explain more fully the meaning of an indefinite or obscure expression; the immediate restatement of an idea in a clearer or fuller form.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A full or additional explanation; exegesis.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rhetoric An additional explanation or explanatory material.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek epexēgēsis, from epexēgeisthai, to explain in detail : ep-, epi-, epi- + exēgeisthai, to explain; see exegesis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek ἐπεξήγησις (epeksēgēsis), from ἐπεξηγέομαι (epeksēgeomai, "I explain in detail"), from ἐπί (epi, "addition") + ἐξηγέομαι (eksēgeomai, "I narrate, describe")

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Examples

  • Here is an instance where the waw with a perfect merely expresses "a digression or an epexegesis," as

    Exposition of Genesis: Volume 1 1892-1972 1942

  • No one has put together, or, to adopt a more expressive phrase, heaped together such enormous paragraphs; no one has linked clause on clause, parenthesis on parenthesis, epexegesis on exegesis, in such a bewildering concatenation of inextricable entanglement.

    A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

  • This conclusion is very much strengthened by the epexegesis, "as if they burned in a furnace;" words of explanation immediately added by St. John, as probably knowing the difficulty which his readers would find in this unusual term.

    Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia. 1807-1886 1863

Comments

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  • n., The addition of a word or words to convey more clearly the meaning implied, or the specific sense intended, in a preceding word or sentence; a word or words added for this purpose.

    August 23, 2008

  • ; for example, what I am doing right now.

    August 23, 2008

  • JM appreciates a good epexegesis, that is to say he has high regard for all instances of further interpretation.

    March 29, 2011