pregnant construction

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)

The term was mostly used to refer to classical languages, such as Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.

• “pregnant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.