elliptical

elliptical (ɪˈlɪptɪk^əl)

—*adj*
1.	relating to or having the shape of an ellipse
2.	relating to or resulting from ellipsis
3.	of speech, literary style, etc
	a. very condensed or concise, often so as to be obscure or ambiguous
	b. circumlocutory or long-winded

usage The use of elliptical to mean circumlocutory should be avoided as it may be interpreted wrongly as meaning condensed or concise

el'liptically

—*adv*

el'lipticalness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

elliptical

1650s, elliptic in shape, from elliptic. Grammatical sense of missing essential words or phrases is recorded from 1778 (see ellipsis).

Example sentences

The head is oval or elliptical, but flattened, so that when viewed in profile

it is pear-shaped.

Many of the other galaxies are denser and egg-shaped, or elliptical, and are

largely filled with old stars.

She held an imaginary pen in her right hand, and it carved wild elliptical arcs

in the air, as if she were shaking a thermometer.

You'd think no one has ever heard of the inverse square, not to mention the

elliptical orbit.

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Matching Quote

"Speech is after all only a system of gestures, having the peculiarity that each gesture produces a characteristic sound, so that it can be perceived through the ear as well as through the eye. Listening to a speaker instead of looking at him tends to make us think of speech as essentially a system of sounds; but it is not; essentially it is a system of gestures made with the lungs and larynx, and the cavities of the mouth and nose. We get still farther away from the fundamental facts about speech when we think of it as something that can be written and read, forgetting that what writing, in our clumsy notations, can represent is only a small part of the spoken sound, where pitch and stress, tempo and rhythm, are almost entirely ignored. But even a writer or reader, unless the words are to fall flat or meaningless, must speak them soundlessly to himself. The written or printed book is only a series of hints, as elliptical as the neumes of Byzantine music, from which the reader thus works out for himself the speech-gestures which alone have the gift of expression."

-R.G. Collingwood