elision
Americannoun
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elisions
plural
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the omission of a vowel, consonant, or syllable in pronunciation.
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(in verse) the omission of a vowel at the end of one word when the next word begins with a vowel, as th'angel.
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an act or instance of eliding or omitting anything.
noun
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the omission of a syllable or vowel at the beginning or end of a word, esp when a word ending with a vowel is next to one beginning with a vowel
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any omission of a part or parts
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of elision
First recorded in 1575–85; from Latin ēlīsiōn- (stem of ēlīsiō ) a striking out, equivalent to ēlīs ( us ) (past participle of ēlīdere; see elide) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
Leaving something out is an elision. If the movie version of your favorite book leaves out the most exciting plot line, it's because the director made an elision. Elision has its roots in the Latin word elidere, which means "to crush out." A government censor who blacks out the names of people or places in a document is making an elision, and so is an editor who removes passages from an article to make it shorter or clearer. The editor probably thinks of the elision as a clean, businesslike cut, but the writer might indeed feel crushed.
Vocabulary lists containing elision
Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - Advanced
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Reading: Literature - Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - High School
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Big Science
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
That’s indicative of a problem throughout “Skinfolk” — Guterl chooses elision over concrete depiction in the memoir’s hardest moments.
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023
Like Martel, Wells knows the power of narrative elision: “Aftersun” may be a feature-length flashback, but apart from a few lyrical framing elements, its story unfolds in a spare, self-contained present tense.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2022
The May 11 KidsPost article “How to be daring on Eat What You Want Day” contained an amazing elision.
From Washington Post ● May 20, 2022
One of the first things you notice about Anna Wiener’s Silicon Valley memoir Uncanny Valley is the author’s elegant elision.
From Slate ● Jan. 7, 2020
This rather deliberate elision of Fermi’s role in neutron research was the prelude to a pitch for $2,250 “to increase the yield of neutron radiation tenfold or more.”
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
It’s frank, intimate, poetic in its elisions and profoundly haunting in its effect.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026
But belief often requires a leap of faith, or in this case, a set of elisions, some false equivalencies, and a few fatuities, all of which make this book hopelessly muddled.
From Slate ● Jun. 7, 2023
But especially as the book progresses, the authors slip into cursory rewrites of well-known history and other elisions that, while sometimes small, nevertheless undermine their credibility.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 10, 2023
What are the contradictions and elisions that emerge?
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 8, 2022
As for t'one and t'other, they should be 'tone and 'tother, being elisions for that one and that other, relics of the Anglo-Saxon declinable definite article, still used in Frisic.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 16, February, 1859 by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
