proleptic

comparative more proleptic · superlative most proleptic

1. Extrapolated to dates prior to its first adoption; of those used to adjust to or from the Julian calendar or Gregorian calendar.

   The proleptic Gregorian calendar is produced by extending the Gregorian calendar backwards to dates preceding its official introduction in 1582.

   2018, Ian Chivers, Jane Sleightholme, Introduction to Programming with Fortran, Springer, →ISBN, page 535

   2 more examples

   The Julian proleptic calendar is formed by applying the rules of the Julian calendar to times before Caesar's reform, and the Julian date (JD) specifies the particular instant of a day by ending the Julian day number with the fraction of the day elapsed since the preceding Greenwich noon.

   1999, Kenneth R. Lang, Astrophysical Formulae: Space, Time, Matter and Cosmology, volume II, Springer, →ISBN, page 70

   The .NET epoch is midnight at the start of January 1st, AD 1, although that's AD 1 in a proleptic Gregorian calendar, which refers to even more complexity we haven't talked about yet.

   2022, Tomasz Lelek, Jon Skeet, Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: How to Make Good Programming Decisions, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 155

2. Anticipatory; prescient or forward-looking.

   A far-seeing or proleptic wisdom.

   1844, Thomas De Quincey, “Greece Under the Romans”, in Blackwood's Magazine

   5 more examples

   In contrast with physical death, spiritual death might be called metaphorical. It becomes proleptic when contrasted with the second and final death.

   1892, Emmanuel Pétavel-Olliff, The Problem of Immortality, page 208

   Herbert Gorman’s life of Joyce was written not only when Finnegans Wake was a long way from completion but with the handicap of the subject himself insisting on a hagiography featuring a prolonged, if proleptic, martyrdom.

   1985 June, Anthony Burgess, “The Prisoner of Fame”, in The Atlantic

   In World Two, Jesus can be seen as the proleptic event, giving promise of God's vindication of creation in and through history.

   1989, W. Paul Jones, Theological Worlds, Nashville: Abingdon Press, page 151

   In a world of youth idolatry, we easily lose our proleptic quality after the first peak, and become regressive, looking back toward the peaks already passed.

   1995, John S. Murphy, Frederic M. Hudson, The Joy of Old: A Guide to Successful Elderhood, page 41

   Viewing the commons as a vehicle for a new world order, Randal Joy Thompson proposes ‘proleptic leadership’, which envisions how leaders will continue to be essential as the custodians of responsible agency and conscious choice.

   2020, Randal Joy Thompson, Proleptic Leadership on the Commons

3. Exhibiting or pertaining to prolepsis (any sense)

   There was no proleptic suffix in Moabite, according to the present evidence.

   1985, W. Randall Garr, Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E, page 168

   4 more examples

   a 'proleptic' epithet describing the result of the hunt, means literally 'with leafage broken' and is formed from the stem of ἀγνύναι.

   1904, Aeschylus, Arthur Woollgar Verrall, The 'Agamemnon' of Aeschylus, page 90

   Starting in the spring of the second year, one terminal indeterminate floral shoot ( I ) was included at every terminal proleptic shoot ( L ) that arose from each proleptic and sylleptic shoot in the summer and full flush of the previous year.

   2005, Jaime Esteban Salvo, The Effect of Nitrogen and Plant Growth Regulators on Sylleptic and Proleptic Shoot Development of 'Hass' Avocado (Persea Americana Mill.), page 104

   Submission, as is fitting for a dystopia written in the mode of the “not yet”, ends in a proleptic future tense, speaking of what will come for François and (with rather less authorial interest) for the people of France.

   2015 September 8, Alex Preston, “Submission by Michel Houellebecq review – satire that’s more subtle than it seems”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   8) Be proleptic, a word that comes from the Greek for “anticipation.” That is, get the better of the major objection to your argument by raising and answering it in advance.

   2017 August 26, Bret Stephens, “Tips for Aspiring Op-Ed Writers”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

plural proleptics

1. An instance of prolepsis;
   1. The placement of an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond.
   2. Information about the outcome of a story placed near the beginning.
   3. A lateral branch that develops from a lateral meristem, after the formation of a bud or following a period of dormancy, when the lateral meristem is split from a terminal meristem.
2. Something that predicts or implies the future or outcome.