ANACOLUTHON (Gr. for " not following on ")  , a grammatical term, given to a defectively constructed sentence which does not run on as a continuous whole; this may occur either, in a text, by some corruption, or, in the case of a writer or speaker, simply through his forgetting the way in which he started . In the case of a man who is full of his subject, or who is carried along by the passion of the moment, such inconsequents are very apt to occur . Of Niebuhr it is told that his oral lectures consisted almost entirely of anacoluthic constructions . To this kind of licence some languages, as Greek and English, readily lend themselves; while the grammatical rigidity of others, as Latin and French, admits of it but sparingly . In Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Pindar and Plato, abundant specimens are to be found; and the same is true of the writers of the Elizabethan age in English . The following is an example:—" And he charged him to tell no man; but go show thyself," &c . (Luke v . 14) .