Not to be confused with aphorismus.
The word aphorism (literally "distinction" or "definition") denotes an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form.
The name was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. The term came to be applied later to other sententious statements of physical science and later still to statements of all kinds of philosophical, moral or literary principles.
Usually an aphorism is a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written. Aphorisms can be both prosaic or poetic, sometimes they have repeated words or phrases, and sometimes they have two parts that are of the same grammatical structure.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aphorisms