Definition:

A rhetorical term for adding words or phrases to further clarify or specify a statement already made. Plural: epexegeses.

A closely related concept is epergesis, where a clarification or correction appears in an appositive. (See Examples and Observations, below.)

See also:

• Apposition
• Common Redundancies
• Distinctio
• Parenthesis
• Pleonasm
• Resumptive Modifier
• Summative Modifier
• Tautology

Etymology:
From the Greek, "explanation"

Examples and Observations:

• "We have no great affection for your government. You would please not take offense at this. But the fact remains that we would cooperate only if the alleged crime is a penal offense, or, as you would say it, a felony.”
  (Jordan Belfort, The Wolf on Wall Street. Random House, 2007)
• "I moved into a monastic four-room floor-through on Seventy-fifth Street. 'Monastic' is perhaps misleading here, implying some chic severity; until after I was married and my husband moved some furniture in, there was nothing at all in those four rooms except a cheap double mattress and box springs, ordered by telephone the day I decided to move, and two French garden chairs lent me by a friend who imported them."
  (Joan Didion, "Goodbye to All That." Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968)
• "The desires of the flesh--and by that I mean not only sinful desires, but even the ordinary, normal appetites for comfort and ease and human respect, are fruitful sources of every kind of error and misjudgement, and because we have these yearnings in us, our intellects (which, if they operated all alone in a vacuum, would indeed register with pure impartiality what they saw) present to us everything distorted and accommodated to the norms of our desires."
  (Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, 1948)

• "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of--and the allegations by--people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble--that means not tell the truth."
  (President George W. Bush, on an Amnesty International report on prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Washington, D.C., May 31, 2005)
• Epergesis
  "Epergesis (Greek for 'additional explanation') [is] a grammatical construction that uses a qualifying opposition , e.g. 'That man, the fool who loves you, just called.'"
  (Jack Elliott Myers and Don C. Wukasch, Dictionary of Poetic Terms. University of North Texas Press, 2003)
• Epexegesis in Debates
  "The parentheticals used as appositions fall into different subcategories as to their rhetorical functions. One such category is the epexegesis . . .. For obvious reasons, the epexegesis occurs frequently in political debates, as illustrated in (6) below:

  (6) The Prime Minister (Tony Blair, Lab): That is absolutely right--the final decision will be taken by the British people in a referendum. Our policy on the euro--to have the test of economic conditions--is the sensible one. The Tory party's euro policy demonstrates its usual misjudgement--rule it on our principle, but only for five years. It is, as one might say, 'a nightmare.'
  (Hansard Debates, 24 November 1999, pt 5)"

  (Cornelia Ilie, "Parenthetically Speaking: Parliamentary Parentheticals as Rhetorical Strategies." Dialogue Analysis 2000, ed. by Marina Bondi et al. Walter de Gruyter, 2003)
• Fluid Language and Thought
  "Epexegesis arises from the fluid condition of language, in which the thought still moves, while it is being expressed, and also from the redundant tendency of Greek, in which symmetry is often sacrificed to fullness and clearness. The act of expression will often suggest some new aspect or point of view, which is added to the construction by an afterthought."
  (Lewis Campbell, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments. Clarendon Press, 1871)
• The Lighter Side of Epexegesis: Stylistic Advice
  "Never use a long or unusual word that requires the addition of more words just to make clear the preceding word or sentence. I'm going to use the word 'epexegesis' because as a writer you should know it, but not use it. Epexegesis is another fun word that only one person in a million might know. The dictionary says that it means 'the addition of more words to make clear the preceding word or sentence.' So stay away from words like epexegesis that need explaining. Words like that only increase your fund of trivia."
  (Leonard N. Simons, Simons Says: Faith, Fun, and Foible. Wayne State University Press, 1984)

Pronunciation: ee-PEK-si-gee-sis

Also Known As: explanatio

Alternate Spellings: epergesis