anacoluthon.

A shift or break in a sentence’s grammatical construction before the original pattern is completed.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a deliberate anacoluthon
• conversational anacoluthon

On the page

The line ‘The traveler who promised to return—she never spoke his name again’ turns through anacoluthon.

His anacoluthon let the reader hear the moment his composure failed.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary. Forms: Singular anacoluthon; plural anacolutha or anacoluthons. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.