A figure of speech in which the speaker pauses rhetorically to express uncertainty or doubt as to how to proceed: How can I describe the beauty of the desert?
a puzzle or perplexity In the early Platonic dialogues, Socrates raised problems without offering solutions to them and showed that those he questioned could not offer an acceptable solution either The aporetic method let to the development of the dialectical methold, by which Socrates elicited truth through questioning The term aporia (no way through) was introduced by Aristotle for puzzles concerning incompatibilities that arise among views we hold without prompting or among reputable beliefs adopted commonly or by the wise His approach was to seek the minimal adjustments needed to reconcile these conflicting views
Explained by Samuel Johnson, in his great dictionary (1755), as "a figure in rhetorick, by which the speaker shews, that he doubts where to begin for the multitude of matter, or what to say in some strange and ambiguous thing; and doth, as it were, argue the case with himself "