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.
"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
