Make Your Point > Archived Issues > ELIDE

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connect this word to others: In reference to a politician, Frank Bruni wrote, "I cringe at his evasions, elisions and rationalizations." And that tells us everything about the word elision and the verb at its heart, elide: When someone elides crucial facts and issues, casually ignoring them or leaving them out of the discussion, it makes us cringe, it makes us uncomfortable, and it makes us distrust the person doing the eliding. Elisions often seem sneaky and self-interested. They omit what isn't omissible. They neglect what isn't negligible. They're downright c_g_y: sly, shrewd, and protective of secrets. (To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) make your point with... "ELIDE" This word has Latin roots that mean "to strike out." It's closely related to "collide" (literally "to strike together") and "lesion" (literally "an injury"). To elide something is to ignore it or to leave it out, as if you're marking through it--usually because you're trying to make people forget about it. And, to elide one thing with a second thing is to act as if they're the same thing, as if you're smashing them together. Pronunciation: Either "uh LIDE" or "ee LIDE." Part of speech: Verb, the transitive kind: "he elided that entire issue in his speech," "the book elides the more violent and inconvenient truths." Other forms: elided, eliding, elision(s), elidible How to use it:  Sometimes we talk literally about eliding sounds or syllables, like when kids say "specially" instead of "especially." Or, we talk about eliding words into one another, like when "want to" becomes "wanna." But we'll focus on the figurative meaning. Talk about people eliding facts, points, issues, differences, questions, etc.  Although it's usually people who elide things, you can also say that speeches, articles, books, films, descriptions, explanations, narratives, and so on elide things. The tone here is generally negative: to elide things is often to be sly and manipulative. Eliding = hiding. examples: "With its blacked-out redacted passages, the report more closely resembles a reverse crossword puzzle. We will collectively be solving for its inky elisions for some time, perhaps the rest of our lives."    — Dwight Garner, The New York Times, 20 April 2019 "In her influential 1931 book American Humor, Constance Rourke included the 'Negro minstrel' alongside the frontier backwoodsman and the Yankee peddler as one of the three archetypes that birthed the brash, mischievous American sense of humor. To her, they all represent the same thing: comic triumph, resilience in the face of adversity. Today, that seems to conveniently elide the fact that minstrel 'darky' stereotypes were constructed by outsiders and oppressors in a way that the frontiersman and the Yankee 'sharp' were not..."    — Ken Jennings, Planet Funny, 2019 has this page helped you understand "elide"? Awesome, I'm glad it helped! Thanks for letting me know! If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. study it: Explain the meaning of "elide" without saying "omit" or "neglect." try it out: Fill in the blanks: "(Someone) focuses on _____, eliding the whole issue of _____." Example 1: "In their statement, the cosmetics company focuses on how their ingredients are all natural, eliding the whole issue of animal cruelty." Example 2: "When my daughter asks about the Cheese Balls, I focus on the fact that I'll buy her a new container, eliding the whole issue of who emptied the first one. Me. It was me." If you like, use this space to draft your sentence. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.) before you review, play: Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first. In August, we're playing the time-honored Game of Venery! We're inventing terms for groups of things: terms that James Lipton, the author of An Exaltation of Larks, calls "shards of poetry and truth." Example terms of venery include lovely ones like "a conflagration of fireflies" and silly ones like "a myopia of umpires," "a rash of dermatologists," and "an unemployment of graduates." In each issue this month, I'll offer two templates. Have fun filling them in and sharing your inventions with your family, being as lofty, silly, or bawdy as you like. In each subsequent issue, I'll list the actual terms that appear in Lipton's book. From the previous issue: 1. A vacuity of _____ 2. A _____ of commercials The terms listed in the book are "a vacuity of game show hosts" and "a glut of commercials." Try these today: 1. An enigma of _____ 2. A _____ of politicians review this word: 1. A near opposite of ELIDE is A. ADDRESS. B. CLOBBER. C. DECIPHER. 2. As Charles Hannon sees it, history has _____ industrial giants like Carnegie and Ford only by eliding _____. A. exalted .. the labor of the masses B. glamorized .. the extent of their talents C. caricatured ..  their dedication and innovations 1. A 2. A a final word: I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog:    36 ways to study words.    Why we forget words, & how to remember them.    How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.