prolepsis
English
editEtymology
editFrom Latin prolepsis, from Ancient Greek πρόληψις (prólēpsis, “preconception, anticipation”), from προλαμβάνω (prolambánō, “take beforehand, anticipate”).
Pronunciation
editNoun
editprolepsis (countable and uncountable, plural prolepses)
Examples (rhetoric) |
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Dead man walking. (He's not dead yet.) |
Examples (grammar, rhetoric) |
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Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735) |
Examples (grammar, rhetoric) |
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That noise, I just heard it again. |
- (rhetoric) The assignment of something to a period of time that precedes it.
- (rhetoric) The anticipation of an objection to an argument.
- (grammar, rhetoric) A construction that consists of placing an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond.
- (philosophy, epistemology) A so-called "preconception", i.e. a pre-theoretical notion which can lead to true knowledge of the world.
- 2017, Attila Németh, Epicurus on the Self, page 42:
- Point (1) seems to imply that one may have a false judgement because of a mismatch between different criteria for truth. For example, my sensation is paired with a prolepsis of a horse, therefore I make an assertion that ‘there is a horse’, which upon further inspection may turn out to be a cow.
- (botany) Growth in which lateral branches develop from a lateral meristem, after the formation of a bud or following a period of dormancy, when the lateral meristem is split from a terminal meristem.
- (narratology) The practice of placing information about the ending of a story near the beginning, as a literary device.
- a. 1662 (date written), Thomas Fuller, “Shrop-shire”, in The History of the Worthies of England, London: […] J[ohn] G[rismond,] W[illiam] L[eybourne] and W[illiam] G[odbid], published 1662, →OCLC, page 3:
- […] [Edmund] Plovvden being of the Romiſh perſvvaſion, ſome Setters trapanned him (pardon the prolepſis) to hear Maſſe: But aftervvards Plovvden underſtanding, that the pretender to Officiate vvas no Prieſt, but a meer Lay-man (on deſigne to make a diſcovering) Oh! The caſe is altered quoth Plovvden: No Priest, no Maſſe.
Synonyms
edit- (anticipation of objection to an argument): procatalepsis, prebuttal
- (grammar, rhetoric): left dislocation, cataphora
- (narratology): anachronism, flashforward, foreshadowing
Antonyms
edit- (botany) syllepsis
Derived terms
editRelated terms
editTranslations
editassignment
(rhetoric) the anticipation of an objection to an argument
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grammatical construction
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philosophical concept
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(narratology) the practice of placing information about the ending of a story near the beginning, as a literary device — see flashforward, foreshadowing
References
editSpanish
editNoun
editprolepsis f (plural prolepsis)
Further reading
edit- “prolepsis”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28
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