Preterition Passing English Sense Pret Uh Rish Uhn Noun Act Omission

noun

1. The act of passing by or over; omission; disregard.

2. Calvinistic Theology. The passing over by God of those not elected to salvation or eternal life.

3. Rhetoric. Paralipsis.

[From the Latin stem praeterit- meaning "to go past," preterition first entered English at the turn of the sixteenth century. While the rhetorical and theological senses were present from the beginning, it took another 100 years for the legal sense to arise in the English language.]

He had no innate sense of tragedy or preterition or complex binds or any of the things that made human beings' misfortunes significant to one another. - David Foster Wallace, Oblivion, 2004

I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. - Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse, 1977