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Proslepsis (from Greek, meaning 'something taken in addition') in rhetoric is the pretence of passing over a subject while at the same time describing it fully. For example,
- "I will not dwell on the senator's shady history with the criminal underworld, or on her alcoholic son... such issues should not be brought up in a reasoned debate."
It is an extreme form of paralipsis.
In logic, proslepsis, as described briefly by Aristotle and in detail by Theophrastus, is a type of proposition in which the middle term of a syllogism is implied. Such a syllogism is then described as a prosleptic syllogism, of which Theophrastus defined three kinds or figures.
References
- Encyclopedia Britannica, "History of Logic"
- Silva Rhetoricae (http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/P/proslepsis.htm)
See also
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