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A.Word.A.Day--paralipsis paralipsis (par-uh-LIP-sis) noun, plural paralipses (-seez) Drawing attention to something while claiming to be passing over it. [From Late Latin paralipsis, from Greek paraleipsis (an omission), from paraleipein (to leave on one side), from para- (side) + leipein (to leave).] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus 3 (New). Paralipsis is especially handy in politics to point out an opponent's faults. It typically involves these phrases: "not to mention" "to say nothing of" "I won't speak of" "leaving aside" An example from Moby Dick: "We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare." "Political correctness has breathed new life into the paralepsis, the rhetorical device whereby we make a statement by first announcing that we are not going to make it. When pundits write 'No one is suggesting...' the American eye reads 'I'm suggesting.'" Florence King; If 'Words Mean Things,' Then All Is Lost; Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia); Feb 19, 1995. This week's theme: words about wordplay. X-Bonus Readers may be divided into four classes: 1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic (1772-1834)

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