A Dictionary of Cont..

ut they extract the facts the police want). To
extort is to get information in much the same
manner as to extract it, though there is a connotation
of more violence and ruthlessness. Illegal
demands, such as ransoms in kidnapping
cases, are extortions. When information is said
to have been extorted, there is a suggestion that
there has been strong resistance to giving it up.
elicit; illicit. Nothing but sheer ignorance could
confuse elicit and illicit. Elicit is a verb, meaning
to draw out (figuratively), to educe, to evoke
(Clever auestioninp further elicited the fact that
he had ieen at G&nston several times before
this “first visit”). Illicit is an adjective meaning
unlawful (illicit love).
elk; deer; wapiti; moose. The animal which in the
United States is called the elk is the wapiti, a
species of deer (Cervus canadensis) with long,
slender antlers. Its equivalent in England,
scarcely distinguishable, is the red deer, the male
of which is the stag. By the word elk the English
designate an animal (Alces alces) closely resembling
what in America is called a moose
(Alces americanus or the Alaskan variety Alces
gigas), the male of which has large palmate
antlers. And if this is not confusing enough, the
word moose is sometimes used in England to
designate the European elk (Alces machlis). Ten
minutes spent in trying to unravel this and half
a dozen other popular names for birds and
mammals will show the layman why scientists
use Latin names for species.
ell in common English usage is solely a measure
of distance. This meaning is known in
America but is now restricted almost entirely
to the saying Give him an ell and he’ll take a
mile. An ell in America (or an el) more generally
means the extension of a building, usually
at right angles to one end (Grandfather
built the ell after Aunt Susan got married and
came to live with him on the furm). Some believe
that this is derived from the fact that the
addition and the main building then form a
letter L, and so it may be, but Old English uses
of the word in this sense, for it was formerly
known in England, though it survives only in
dialects, suggest that it may have derived from
aisle, which meant wing.
El is used a great deal in America as an abbreviation
for elevated railroad. This meaning
is unknown in England.
ellipse; ellipsis. An ellipse is a term used in geometry.
It means a plane curve such that the sums
of the distances of each point in its periphery
from two fixed points, the foci, are equal. It is
a conic section formed by the intersection of a
right circular cone by a plane which cuts
obliquely the axis and the opposite sides of the
cone.
Ellipsis is a term used in grammar. It means
the omission from a sentence of a word or words
that are essential to its grammatical completeness,
though not necessarily to the completeness
of its sense.
Some authorities would have elliptic the ad-
153 ellipsis
jective for ellipse and elliptical for ellipsis, but in
American usage elliptic is simply a rare form of
elliptical.
ellipsis. The plural is ellipses.
This term is used by some grammarians to
refer to words that do not actually occur in a
sentence but which they feel are needed in making
a certain kind of grammatical analysis or to
explain a grammatical construction. These words
are sometimes described as “words which the
hearer easily supplies.”
There is no doubt that English allows us to
omit a great many words that we could have
used without changing the meaning in any way.
For example, some verb which is known to the
hearer has obviously been omitted from the end
of the statement he doesn’t want to. Some grammarians,
abusing the privilege of putting words
into another person’s mouth, recognize no limit
to the number of words which they may read
into a sentence. It has been claimed that the
word fire! satisfies a certain definition of a sentence
because it represents an ellipsis, which may
be (there is a) fire (here) or (you men) fire
(your guns). It is sometimes said that a sentence
such as no one saw it but me is ungrammatical
and should be no one saw it but I because there
is an ellipsis of the word sa~v. The answer to
arguments of this kind is to say: “If I had meant
saw, I would have said I saw.” No one should
allow himself to be convicted of bad grammar
on the basis of words he has not used.
On the other hand, some grammarians seem
to think that the composer of a sentence may not
omit any word which does not appear elsewhere
in the sentence in the same grammatical form.
It is claimed that Z was young, they old is ungrammatical
because the word to be supplied is
were and not was. All writers and speakers of
English, including these very grammarians themselves,
omit words which never will be missed,
whether they have already been used in the sentence
or not. This is never objectionable unless
the sentence becomes misleading, that is, unless
the omitted words actually are missed. English
that leaves nothing at all to the imagination becomes
tiresome, and even insulting.
Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely
be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable
to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief
and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and
obscurity and must be used with skill.
ellipsis marks have the following uses:
To indicate omissions in a quotation, as in
Give me liberty or . . . death! If in a longer
quotation the ellipsis includes the end of a sentence,
the period joins the ellipsis and makes a
total of four dots.
To show hesitation or the passage of time in
dialogue or narrative, as in Please, please . . .
you mustn’t leave and The time passed very
slowly. . . and Sarah became sleepier and sleepier.
Ellipses are now shown by three periods. They
were once shown by three asterisks, and aster