Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See paralipsis.

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

  • noun (Rhet.) A pretended or apparent omission; a figure by which a speaker artfully pretends to pass by what he really mentions; as, for example, if an orator should say, “I do not speak of my adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity, his brutal conduct, his treachery and malice.”

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

  • noun rhetoric, linguistics A figure of speech in which one pretends to ignore or omit something by actually mentioning it, as in: "I do not speak of my adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity, his brutal conduct, his treachery and malice".

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun suggesting by deliberately concise treatment that much of significance is omitted

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek παράλειψις (paraleipsis, "omission"), from παραλείπω (paraleipō, "I pass over"), from παρά (para, "by, near") + λείπω (leipō, "I leave").

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