| caesura |
| Definition: An audible pause in a line of verse. It is usually indicated by either punctuation marks or double pipes (||). |
| Example: In Pope's To err is human; to forgive, divine the caesura is indicated by the semicolon. |
| Etymology: In Latin it literally means "a cutting" (from the Latin cædere, to cut down). |
| Oxford English Dictionary: The word's first OED citation is from 1573: "Cæsura … a peece of a sentence or verse.' (Cooper Thesaurus) |