Anapodoton (an’-a-po’-do-ton): A figure in which a main clause is suggested by the introduction of a subordinate clause, but that main clause never occurs.
Anapodoton is a kind of anacoluthon, since grammatical expectations are interrupted. If the expression trails off, leaving the subordinate clause incomplete, this is sometimes more specifically called anantapodoton. Anapodoton has also named what occurs when a main clause is omitted because the speaker interrupts himself/herself to revise the thought, leaving the initial clause grammatically unresolved but making use of it nonetheless by recasting its content into a new, grammatically complete sentence.
When I made my 90,000 . . . Money makes the world go around, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but always working away in the background and the foreground generating profits, losses, and break-even results.
If you can’t find a job . . . I couldn’t find a job so I started my own business. I’ve been selling lab equipment to “entrepreneurs” who live in mobile homes on the outskirts of towns across the Southern regions of the USA.
It’s kind of funny, but they all have in common that they pay cash and have skinny bodies and bad teeth. I often wonder what they use the lab equipment for, but I don’t want to know–ever! I just assume they are some kind of scientists. Maybe they all have Federal grants to find a cure for cancer or or save the coral reefs.
But, like I said: It’s non of my business!
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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