Sunday, November 4, 2012
apophasis \uh-POF-uh-sis\, noun
Denial of one's intention to speak of a subject that is at the same time named or insinuated, as ?I shall not mention Caesar's avarice, nor his cunning, nor his morality.?
But I think that anything that is deep isn't love, it's deliberate calculation or schizophrenia. I myself wouldn't even attempt to say what love is - probably both love and God can only be defined by apophasis, through those things that they are not.
-- Viktor Pelevin, The Sacred Book of the Werewolf
"?Now, I have no desire to be a backseat driver?? Apophasis, Chris thought; saying you're not going to say something in order to say it. Nixon's favorite device, and Newt Gingrich's, and Karl Rove's?fine old
Republican tradition.
-- John Barnes, Directive 51
Apophasis stems from the Greek word ap�pha meaning "to say no, deny." The suffix -sis appears in Greek
loanwords, where it forms an abstract noun from a verb, as in thesis.
No comments:
Post a Comment