word of the day: caesura

The word of the day is caesura:

Etymology:  < Latin cæsūra ‘cutting, metrical pause’, < cæs- participial stem of cædĕre to cut. The earlier form was immediately < French césure. (Some writers appear to have erroneously associated it with cease.) 

 

1.a. In Greek and Latin prosody: the division of a metrical foot between two words, especially in certain recognized places near the middle of the line.

b. Used for the lengthening of the last syllable of a word by arsis which sometimes occurs in the cæsura.

2. In English prosody: a pause or breathing-place about the middle of a metrical line, generally indicated by a pause in the sense. 

3. transf.a. A formal break or stop. 

b. A break, interruption, interval. (OED)

"The director suggested that he not move around too much, or at all, contending that theatre is ultimately not spectacle but sound.  With a cynical chuckle, Malkovich would invoke Faulkner's line about man's 'puny, inexhaustible voice still talking'.  Pinter's plots are rife with exhausted intervals, of course, and onstage, Sands parses the varieties: a beat is a breath, a pause is a moment of consideration, and a silence - he lets the caesura linger - is an absence so emphatic that it becomes a presence."

 - Tad Friend, "Skyping John Malkovich", 3 December 2012 The New Yorker