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.
I had . . . it was a nightmare—a timeshare nightmare. All of the people I shared it with were slobs, leaving it for me to take over each summer with trash cans overflowing, dirty dishes stacked up, and bad smells saturating the air. It was like walking into a recently inhabited crypt with a badly embalmed corpse packed in a half-closed drawer.
After spending the day cleaning the place up, I decided to call a meeting with my co-tenants. I had never met them before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I could only imagine! Stained t-shirts filled with holes, shorts caked with hand wipings of every kind, faint odor of excrement, yellow teeth, snow-storm dandruff, etc.
There were three co-tenants. As far as I could see they were all offenders. We met at a restaurant named “Onion Rings on the Lake.” They all showed up 15-45 minutes late. As they shuffled in they didn’t fit my musings at all. Beautifully and sharply dressed, it was like watching a fashion show or a beauty pageant. One woman was wearing a diamond the size of a ping-pong ball.
I was shocked. Then they started lecturing me on time-share hygiene, like I was the offender, when I’d actually been cleaning up their shit for the past five years. They were adamant. I was the super-slob.
Maybe it was true. I had cleanliness “issues” ever since I was a little kid. My parents were mandated by a court order to send me away to hygiene camp—“Shiny Orifice.” Among other things, I had to practice picking up a garbage bag, cleaning my fingernails, scraping residue off my shorts, pooping and wiping silently, and flossing my teeth. It was hard for me as a free range slob. I escaped 9 times and never quite finished the program.
I went into the Onion Rings’ men’s room and took a good look at myself in the mirror for the first time since I was released from Shiny Orifice. It was me! One look and I could tell—my t-shirt, my hair, my teeth, my off-color orifice. I was the offender.
Clearly, though, I thought I’d been cleaning the place up, but I wasn’t. How could that be? I vowed to find out and then remedy it. I got a therapist when I got home. She would unravel the mystery and my insurance would cover it. I told her my story. She pulled an orange peel out of the wastebasket and rubbed it on my nose. I grabbed it and sat on it. She stuck her fingers in the holes on my t-shirt. I yelled, “Stir your fingers around faster.” She did, and I had a very embarrassing orgasm in my crusty pants.
She said “Ooh I know what’s wrong with you! You have ‘Oppopsychopakinosis.’ You think you’re tidying up when you’re making a mess. I am writing a prescription for you that will bring things into the proper order. It is called ‘1,2,3’ and you can pick it up at CVS pharmacy.
The meds have been a godsend, but I’m still seeing my therapist to stay tuned up. I go in for the “fingers in the t-shirt holes” treatment once a month. Needless to say, I have fallen in love with her. I wish we could walk hand in hand in a landfill holding hands together on a swinging bag of garbage.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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