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.^[1]

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" (Chinese: 井底之蛙, Korean: 우물 안 개구리, Japanese: 井の中の蛙), the last abbreviating "a frog in a well does not know the great ocean" (井の中の蛙大海を知らず).