correctio means the amending of a statement just made by further detailing the meaning. It carries an Arena rating of 1561, earned across 7 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, correctio ranks #1,546 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,276 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #3,650 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #3,938 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words.
Why “correctio” is a great word
A rhetorical figure in which a speaker immediately amends or refines a statement just made by providing further detail or a more precise term. From Latin corrēctiō ("an amendment, improvement"). Unlike metanoia, which broadly covers any revision of thought and can signal a change of mind, or the more general epanorthosis of simple correction, correctio is the specific, urgent act of honing language for accuracy. It is the self-interrupting pulse of a mind unsatisfied with approximation: the politician who speaks of 'my opponent—no, my *adversary*'; the lover who describes 'a beautiful, or rather, a *devastating* face'; the witness who recalls 'a vehicle, a blue sedan, to be exact.' In its quick, corrective breath lies the humble, human admission that our first draft of the world is always provisional, a lie waiting to be refined into a more honest truth.
Etymology
From Latin corrēctiō. Doublet of correction.
noun
- The amending of a statement just made by further detailing the meaning.e.g.“This syntactic correctio (self-correction) is not so emphatic as to constitute full ambiguity.” — 1998, Alastair Fowler, editor, Paradise Lost (Longman Annotated English Poets, Second Edition), →ISBN, page 17:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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