Ellipse is a figure of speech of the Portuguese language, which consists of the omitting one or more terms from a clause, and these are easily identified from the context of the text.
In the classification of figures of speech, the ellipse is categorized as a construction figure, with the main objective of attributing greater expressiveness to the meaning of a given text.
The term omitted from the sentence is implied and is identifiable solely because of the context of the text.
Etymologically, the word “ellipse” originated from the Greek élleipsis, which can be translated as “lack” or “defect”.
Ellipse example
"On my desk, papers and books" (the verb "be" is hidden in this sentence, otherwise the sentence would be: “on my desk there are papers and books”).
"At the end of the night, on the floor, people and bottles" (the verb "be" is also hidden).
"We arrived early today" (the pronoun "we" was hidden in this case).
Ellipse and Zeugma
Zeugma is a genre of ellipse, but it is differentiated by the fact that the
term to be omitted has already been mentioned previously in the text. In the case of the ellipse, however, the term occult was not mentioned before.Example:“He likes music, I like travel” (omission of the verb "like" in the second period of prayer).
See also: O meaning of Figures of Language.
In mathematics, an ellipse is an almost circular but slightly flat geometric shape, making it have a major axis and a minor axis.
The Earth's movement around the Sun, for example, follows an elliptical trajectory, that is, in an ellipse shape.
Also learn more about the meaning of Zeugma and definite and indefinite article.
