Literature Glossary
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Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.
Elision
Definition:
Brevity is the sole of wit. At least so sayeth that famously prying papa Polonius.
It's also the soul of elision: That's when you remove letters, syllables, or sounds from a word in order to make it shorter, and stick an apostrophe in its place. You know, like if you shorten until to 'til or because to 'cause. Writers shorten words for all sorts of reasons, from mimicking the way people really talk to creating rhythm in a poem.
So what's the difference between elision and a contraction? Contractions are when you join two words together to form a shorter word, like combining do and not into don't. Elision doesn't deal strictly with shortening or blending words. Got it? A'ight.