Brachylogia
Deliberate omission of conjunctions between single words for clipped speed.
Brachylogia is a form of extreme concision in which conjunctions are dropped between individual words, producing a staccato list: 'Veni, vidi, vici' in its bare-word variant, or 'cold, dark, still'. Classical handbooks treat it as the word-level relative of asyndeton, which omits conjunctions between phrases and clauses.
The effect is speed and pressure. Removing 'and' removes the small pause it creates, so the items arrive as one continuous impression rather than as an enumerated set — useful for urgency, exhaustion, or accumulating dread.
Because the device is purely subtractive, it is easy to overuse. A page of brachylogia reads as telegraphese and loses the contrast that makes any single instance land.
Common mistake: calling every comma-separated list brachylogia. The figure requires that a conjunction be expected and withheld; a list already idiomatic without 'and' is just a list.
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Keep reading the glossary
A rhetorical figure that removes conjunctions between clauses for speed and force.
A rhetorical figure that repeats conjunctions for rhythmic accumulation and biblical weight.
A rhetorical structure of three parallel clauses, phrases, or words — the most persuasive number in English.
A figure in which points already made are gathered and restated in a compressed rush at the end of an argument.