pregnant construction

English

Noun

pregnant construction (plural pregnant constructions)

1. (rhetoric, archaic) An utterance in which more is implied than is said, such as "the beasts trembled forth from their dens" (i.e. trembling with fright).

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “pregnant construction”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)