Word of the Day

preterition \pret-uh-RISH-uhn\,
noun:
1. the act of passing by or over; omission; disregard.
2. Law. the passing over by a testator of an heir otherwise entitled to a portion.
3. Calvinistic Theology. the passing over by God of those not elected to salvation or eternal life.
4. Rhetoric. paralipsis.

He had no innate sense of tragedy or preterition or complex binds or any of the things that made human beings' misfortunes significant to one another.
-- David Foster Wallace, "Oblivion," 2004

I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor.
-- Roland Barthes, "A Lover's Discourse," 1977

From the Latin stem praeterit- meaning "to go past," preterition first entered English at the turn of the sixteenth century. While the rhetorical and theological senses were present from the beginning, it took another 100 years for the legal sense to arise in the English language.


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