Word of the Day

: August 9, 2014

apophasis

noun uh-PAH-fuh-sis

What It Means

: the raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it

apophasis in Context

"I won't bring up that little incident that happened the last time you tried to cook a meal," said Laura, in a blatant display of apophasis.

"The hope is that if people recognize when rhetoric is being used to deceive, they will learn to use more persuasive language themselves. For example, salespeople tell us 'you don't need to decide now.' This is apophasis, whereby the negative words do not stick in our minds and appear to reject a point while actually emphasizing it." - Nicholas Cole, Alternatives Journal, 2014

Did You Know?

Apophasis is a sly debater's trick, a way of sneaking an issue into the discussion while maintaining plausible deniability. It should come as no surprise, then, that the roots of "apophasis" lie in the concept of denial-the word was adopted into English from Late Latin, where it means "repudiation," and derives from the Greek "apophanai," meaning "to deny." ("Apophanai," in turn, comes from "apo-," meaning "away from" or "off," and "phanai," meaning "to say.") This particular rhetorical stunt is also known by the labels "preterition" and "paraleipsis" (which is a Greek word for "omission"), but those words are rarer than "apophasis." Incidentally, don’t confuse "apophasis" with "apophysis"; the latter is a scientific word for an expanded or projecting part of an organism.