Pausis

Pausis is a term derived from the ancient Greek word paúsis, meaning a stopping or pause. In scholarly usage, pausis refers to a momentary interruption or boundary within speech, verse, or performance. The concept centers on the idea that a pause functions as a structural or rhetorical device rather than a mere absence of sound.

In classical rhetoric and poetics, pausis is closely associated with deliberate pauses that structure discourse, emphasize a point, or prepare the listener for a conclusion. In poetry and drama, pauses help regulate rhythm, pace, and emphasis, and may be produced by punctuation, breath, or syntactic boundaries. The concept is often discussed alongside related ideas such as caesura (a pronounced break within a line) and fermata (a performance pause in musical notation), highlighting the cross-disciplinary attention to how pauses shape meaning and reception.

In modern linguistics and discourse analysis, pausis are studied as prosodic boundaries that segment speech into units like breath groups or intonational phrases. Researchers examine how pauses contribute to coherence, turn-taking, and listener interpretation, differentiating between natural, cognitive, and stylistic pauses. Pausis can thus serve multiple functions, from signaling syntactic structure to signaling discourse shifts or rhetorical intent.

Today, the term appears mainly in scholarly discussions of rhetoric, poetics, and linguistics. While not a common term in everyday language, pausis provides a concise way to refer to the deliberately induced or studied pauses that organize spoken and written communication.

See also: caesura, caesural pause, fermata, prosody.