Prolepsis - Definition and Overview

Prolepsis (from the Greek prolambanein, to anticipate) can be:

1. A figure of speech in which a future event is referred to in anticipation. For example, a character who is about to die might be described as "the dead man", before he is actually dead. The same device can be used in non-verbal media such as film, where it is also called flashforward. [Source: Britannica]
2. The anticipation of an objection. For example, a speaker might say "'Ah', you say, 'but that is impossible!'" Here the speaker is anticipating the objection 'Ah, but that is impossible!' from his audience - and is probably about to refute that objection before it arises. This form is more accurately called procatalepsis. [1] (http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/P/prolepsis.htm)
3. A grammatical construction that consists of placing an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond. Example: "That noise, I just heard it again.", where that noise grammatically belongs in place of it.
4. A philosophical concept used in ancient epistemology (in particular by Epicurus and the Stoa) to indicate a so-called "preconception", i.e. a pre-theoretical notion which can lead to true knowledge of the world.

See also

• Proslepsis

Example Usage of Prolepsis