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Oct 3, 2019
This week’s theme
There’s a word for it

This week’s words
thinko
besaiel
apophenia
anacoluthon
delphinestrian

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

anacoluthon

PRONUNCIATION:
(a-nuh-kuh-LOO-thahn/thuhn)

MEANING:
noun: An abrupt change in the middle of a sentence making one part inconsistent with the other.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin anacoluthon, from Greek anakolouthos, from an- (not) + akolouthos (following), from a- (together) + keleuthos (path). Earliest documented use: 1706.

USAGE:
“And what you might call the master figure in Ms Palin’s speech was anacoluthon: sentences that set off boldly in one direction and, with a wrench of grammar, jump the tracks and end up pointing in quite another.
‘Trump’s candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, OK?’
‘Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritise, to keep the main thing, the main thing, and he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily.’”
Sam Leith; Palin’s Rhetoric Soup Is Tasty Fare for American Conservatives; Financial Times (London, UK); Jan 22, 2016.

See more usage examples of anacoluthon in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity. -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (3 Oct 1900-1938)

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