caesurae

Noun

caesura (plural caesuras or caesurae)

1. (rhetoric) A pause or interruption in a poem, music, building, or other work of art.
   • The caesura is meant to fall not with the comma after difficult, but after thou; and there is a most effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan who speaks— Satan in the wilderness; and he marks, as he wishes to mark, the tremendous opposition of attitude between the two parties to the...1847, Thomas De Quincey, Milton Versus Southey and Landor
2. (Classical) Using two words to divide a metrical foot.
3. The caesura mark ‖ or ||.

   Synonyms:

   virgule

4. (rare) A break of an era or other measure of history and time; where one era ends and another begins; turning point.
   • Like the knocking at the door in Macbeth, or the cry of the watchman in the Tour de Nesle, they show that the horrible cæsura is over and the nightmares have fled away, because the day is breaking and the ordinary life of men is beginning to bestir itself among the streets.c. 1870, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nuits Blanches