Anapodoton

An anapodoton (from Ancient Greek ἀναπόδοτον anapódoton: "that which lacks an apodosis", that is, the consequential clause in a conditional sentence), plural anapodota, is a rhetorical device related to the anacoluthon; both involve a thought being interrupted or discontinued before it is fully expressed. It is a figure of speech or discourse that is an incomplete sentence, consisting of a subject or complement without the requisite object. The stand-alone subordinate clause suggests or implies a subject (a main clause), but this is not actually provided.

As an intentional rhetorical device, it is generally used for set phrases, where the full form is understood, and would thus be tedious to spell out, as in "When in Rome [do as the Romans]."

Anapodota are common in Classical Chinese and languages that draw from it, such as Korean and Japanese, where a long literary phrase is commonly abbreviated to just its condition. For example, Zhuangzi's phrase "a frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean" (井鼃不可以語於海者拘於虛也), meaning "people of limited experience have a narrow world view", is rendered as "a frog in a well" (, , ), the last abbreviating "a frog in a well does not know the great ocean".