Definition of "prolepsis"

prolepsis

/pɹoʊˈlɛpsɪs/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural prolepses
1. (rhetoric) The assignment of something to a period of time that precedes it.
2. (logic) The anticipation of an objection to an argument.
  Quotations
  Prolepsis makes objections; then replies;And wisely thus anticipates surprise.]
  Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, page 59
3. (grammar, rhetoric) A construction that consists of placing an element in a syntactic unit before that to which it would logically correspond.
4. (philosophy, epistemology) A so-called "preconception", i.e. a pre-theoretical notion which can lead to true knowledge of the world.
  Quotations
  Point (1) seems to imply that one may have a false judgement because of a mismatch between different criteria for truth. For example, my sensation is paired with a prolepsis of a horse, therefore I make an assertion that ‘there is a horse’, which upon further inspection may turn out to be a cow.
  2017, Attila Németh, Epicurus on the Self, page 42
5. (botany) Growth in which lateral branches develop 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.
6. (authorship) The practice of placing information about the ending of a story near the beginning, as a literary device.