2. a literary quotation at the beginning of a book
► uses
Uses:
Heeding his own advice in the quotation taken as the epigraph to this book, he invites us not to settle for the prescriptions of others
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (Maude translation, intro)
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[the] keys were revealed to him and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man's time and space: [spoiler text skipped...]
Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude, p.446 (1970)
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The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic).