prolepsis

From Latin prolepsis, from Ancient Greek πρόληψις (prólēpsis, “preconception, anticipation”), from προλαμβάνω (prolambánō, “take beforehand, anticipate”)

• IPA^(key): /pɹoʊˈlɛpsɪs/

prolepsis (countable and uncountable, plural prolepses)

1. (rhetoric) The assignment of something to a period of time that precedes it.
2. (logic) The anticipation of an objection to an argument.
3. (grammar, rhetoric) A construction that consists of placing an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond.
4. (philosophy, epistemology) A so-called "preconception", i.e. a pre-theoretical notion which can lead to true knowledge of the world.
   • 2017, Attila Németh, Epicurus on the Self, page 42:

     Point (1) seems to imply that one may have a false judgement because of a mismatch between different criteria for truth. For example, my sensation is paired with a prolepsis of a horse, therefore I make an assertion that ‘there is a horse’, which upon further inspection may turn out to be a cow.

5. (botany) Growth in which lateral branches develop from a lateral meristem, after the formation of a bud or following a period of dormancy, when the lateral meristem is split from a terminal meristem.
6. (authorship) The practice of placing information about the ending of a story near the beginning, as a literary device.

• (representation of something that has occurred before its time): anachronism, flashforward, foreshadowing
• (anticipation of objection to an argument): procatalepsis
• (grammar, rhetoric): left dislocation

• (botany): syllepsis

• proleptic

• -lepsy
• syllepsis

• Silva Rhetoricae