ellipsis
Pluralellipses
- 1A punctuation mark made of several periods that signals omitted, missing, or illegible words, or in mathematics shows that a pattern continues.
The editor replaced the deleted clause with an ellipsis to keep the citation honest.
In the equation, an ellipsis stood in for all the terms between the first and the last.
Note
The mark takes its name from Greek élleipsis, "omission," and its dots may be spaced or set tight together. It also goes by suspension points or suspension dots, and, colloquially, dot dot dot. In mathematics the gap is filled rather than lost: in 1, 2, 3, ..., 8, 9 the pattern supplies the missing numbers, and 0.333... runs on forever. Its plural is ellipses.
- 2The leaving out of a word or phrase that can still be understood from the surrounding context.
Casual conversation relies heavily on ellipsis, dropping subjects and verbs that the listener fills in automatically.
The sentence "She can sing, and he can too" shows ellipsis, since "sing" is understood after "too."
Similaromission
Note
Grammarians and rhetoricians use the word for the gap itself, not for any mark on the page. In "She can sing, and he can too," nothing signals the missing verb, and the listener supplies it without effort. Used without an article, it names the general habit, as in "conversation is full of ellipsis." With an article, it names a single instance. The name fits the Greek "omission" behind the punctuation mark.
- 3The leaving out of scenes in a film that do not advance the plot.
The film employs ellipsis to skip the years of training and land directly on the final match.
Through ellipsis, the story leaps from the wedding to the couple's tenth anniversary.
Note
Film takes the idea of the grammatical omission and applies it to time: what goes missing is a stretch of story, not a word. David Blanke's The 1910s (2002) links the practice to the period when writers and directors could first cut scenes that did not further the plot. He notes that filmmakers called those cuts "ellipses." The viewer, like a listener, fills in what was skipped.
Less common meaning
- 4A closed oval curve of the kind otherwise known as an ellipse.
Note
Geometry once used this spelling for the oval curve itself, and that usage is now obsolete. The two words are doublets: the same Greek source reached English by two routes. They have since divided the work, so ellipse names the curve and ellipsis names the omission. Calling an oval "an ellipsis" today reads as a slip rather than as a deliberate archaism.
Practice
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Origin
An unadapted borrowing from Latin "ellīpsis", which came from the Ancient Greek "élleipsis" meaning "omission". It is a doublet of "ellipse".