zeugma [Grk zeũgma ‘bond’]

A figure of speech and type of abbreviation. Originally, it was a general term of grammatical ellipsis (e.g. He drank beer, she wine), but is now used more specifically for certain co-ordinated structures whose common predicate connects two semantically or syntactically unequal parts of the sentence: (a) syntactically incongruous zeugma: He’s drinking beer, we wine; (b) semantically incongruous zeugma: He travelled with his wife and his umbrella. Apokoinou is a special type of zeugma.