Having admitted that the projectile was describing an orbit around the moon, this orbit must necessarily be elliptical; science proves that it must be so.
Of, or showing ellipsis; having a word or words omitted.
If he is sometimes elliptical and obscure, it is because he has so much to tell us. -- w:Edmund Wilson|Edmund Wilson
Browning's dark and elliptical mode of speech, like his love of the grotesque, was simply a characteristic of his, a trick of his temperament, and had little or nothing to do with whether what he was expressing was profound or superficial.