APA Dictionary of Psychology

n. in linguistics, the use of a word (often a pronoun) to refer back to a word used earlier, usually to avoid repetition. In You take the high road, I’ll take the low one, the use of one to mean road is an example of anaphora. Ability to form and process such constructions has been a major preoccupation of generative grammar and psycholinguistics. See also antecedent. —anaphoric adj.