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May 4, 2007

This week's theme
Words about words

This week's words
haplography
obiter dictum
asyndeton
verbigeration
brachylogy

This week’s comments
AWADmail 260

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brachylogy

noun: Conciseness of diction or an instance of such.

[From Medieval Latin brachylogia, from Greek brakhulogi, brakhu-, brachy- (short) + -logy, from logos (word).]

"The term for the omission of words that are intended to be 'understood' by the reader is ellipsis. Its extreme or irregular form has a name in Greek rhetoric: brachylogy, relying on the listener to supply the missing words, much as I relied on the reader to put a verb in the sentence fragment 'A profound question, that.'"
William Safire; Microwave of the Future; The New York Times; Oct 7, 1990.

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