Words & WritingGreek → English
Asyndeton
/əˈsɪndɪtən/noun
The deliberate omission of conjunctions between clauses or list items.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not, without
σύνδετον
sýndeton
bound together
Literally: “not bound together”
The story of the word
Veni, vidi, vici is the standard case: three verbs, nothing joining them, and the speed is the whole message. Its opposite, polysyndeton, wedges in every and until the sentence marches. Aristotle recommends asyndeton for the end of a speech in the Rhetoric, on the grounds that a closing wants force rather than smoothness.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
polysyndetonsyndeticsyndesmosis
In a sentence
Strip the conjunctions out and the paragraph turns into asyndeton, blunt and quick.