ellipses
|e-llip-ses|
/ɪˈlɪpsiːz/
(ellipse / ellipsis)
falling short / omission
Etymology
'ellipses' originates from Greek, specifically the word 'ἔλλειψις (elleipsis)', where the root 'elleip-' meant 'to fall short' or 'be lacking'.
'ellipses' entered English via Latin and Old French (Latin 'ellipsis', French 'ellipse/ellipsis'); the original Greek term gave rise to both the geometric sense 'ellipse' and the rhetorical sense 'ellipsis' in English.
Initially it meant 'a falling short' in Greek; over time this developed into two related English meanings: a geometric 'oval' (ellipse) and a rhetorical 'omission' (ellipsis).
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
plural form of 'ellipse': a regular oval-shaped plane curve (the set of points the sum of whose distances to two fixed points (foci) is constant).
The diagram showed several ellipses representing the possible orbits.
Synonyms
Noun 2
plural form of 'ellipsis': the omission of words from a sentence or the punctuation mark (...) used to indicate such an omission.
When quoting, use ellipses to indicate omitted material.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Last updated: 2025/12/15 08:46