Ellipsis. The omission of a word or of words necessary to complete the grammatical construction, but not necessary to make the meaning clear, is called an ellipsis. We almost always, whether in speaking or in writing, leave out some of the words necessary to the full expression of our meaning. For example, in dating a letter to-day, we should write, "New York, August 25, 1881," which would be, if fully written out, "I am now writing in the city of New York; this is the twenty-fifth day of August, and this month is in the one thousand eight hundred and eighty-first year of the Christian era." "I am going to Wallack's" means, "I am going to Wallack's theatre." "I shall spend the summer at my aunt's"; i. e., at my aunt's house.
By supplying the ellipses we can often discover the errors in a sentence, if there are any.
Enjoy bad Health. As no one has ever been known to enjoy bad health, it is better to employ some other form of expression than this. Say, for example, he is in feeble, or delicate, health.
Enthuse. This is a word that is occasionally heard in conversation, and is sometimes met with in print; but it has not as yet made its appearance in the dictionaries. What its ultimate fate will be, of course, no one can tell; for the present, however, it is studiously shunned by those who are at all careful in the selection of their language. It is said to be most used in the South. The writer has never seen it anywhere in the North but in the columns of the "Boston Congregationalist."
Epigram. "The word epigram signified originally an inscription on a monument. It next came to mean a short poem containing some single thought pointedly expressed, the subjects being very various—amatory, convivial, moral, eulogistic, satirical, humorous, etc. Of the various devices for brevity and point employed in such compositions, especially in modern times, the most frequent is a play upon words.... In the epigram the mind is roused by a conflict or contradiction between the form of the language and the meaning really conveyed."—Bain.
Some examples are:
"When you have nothing to say, say it."
"We can not see the wood for the trees"; that is, we can not get a general view because we are so engrossed with the details.
"Verbosity is cured by a large vocabulary"; that is, he who commands a large vocabulary is able to select words that will give his meaning tersely.
"By indignities men come to dignities."