Home › Glossary › Letter A

anticipatory postponement

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A technique of delaying meaning by referencing something yet to come.

Detailed Definition
Anticipatory postponement delays expected resolution, completion, or revelation while signaling that something significant approaches. This technique creates suspense by suggesting imminent disclosure while deferring actual delivery. Anticipatory postponement differs from simple delay by specifically indicating that something awaits, building tension through the gap between promise and fulfillment. The technique manages reader engagement by creating expectation while strategically withholding satisfaction, intensifying impact when resolution finally arrives.
Example
Example in poetry:
Anticipatory postponement delays expected resolution for tension: Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” withholds narrative closure (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”); Emily Dickinson’s dashes suspend syntactic completion (“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –”); T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” defers action (“Do I dare disturb the universe?”); contemporary poets like Terrance Hayes use enjambment to delay racial reckonings in “American Sonnets”; Shakespeare’s sonnets often postpone volta until final couplet.
Additional Notes
anticipatory postponement is a rhetorical device where a crucial piece of information, a key word, or the completion of a thought is hinted at (anticipatory) but deliberately delayed (postponement) until the very end of a line or sentence for dramatic emphasis.
Also Known As
Postponed climax Deferred anticipation Withheld expectation Suspended moment Cataphoric deferral
Skip to main content