ANACOLUTHON. [Stress: ‘a-na-ko-L(Y)OO-thon’]. Also anacoluthia. In RHETORIC, a break or change of direction in a speech: ‘I will have such revenges on you both, / That all the world shall—I will do such things, / What they are, yet I know not’ ( Shakespeare, King Lear, 2.4). In texts, the break is often signalled by a DASH: ‘I was listening to the news—this man, he's a company director in London—the police arrested him.’

anacoluthon lack of grammatical sequence. XVIII. — lateL. — Gr. anakólouthon, n. sg. of adj. ‘lacking sequence’, f. AN-2 + akólouthos following (cf. ACOLYTE).