Difference Between Implicit and Explicit
Implicit and explicit are two kings of meaning that are often confused as regards to their goals. They both have different purposes. Implicit is indirect meaning. On the other hand explicit is the expressed meaning. This is the main difference between the two words.
Let us take an example to make the idea of two words implicit and explicit clear. Look at the sentences ‘A Hamlet on the Thames’. What is said in the sentence is the meaning that is expressed explicitly and it runs like ‘A village on Thames.
The implicit meaning of the sentence given above is ‘A hamlet on the banks of the Thames’. Thus it is understood that the implicit meaning is nothing but the indirect meaning. The implicit meaning is secondary meaning you get the sense expressed by an elementary sentence.
In the sentence given above, a hamlet on the Thames, it can not literally be a village on the River Thames. How a village can exist on a river? This is the question lingering in the minds of a connoisseur. So the reader understands that there is a village or a hamlet on the banks of the River Thames. This is the implicit meaning conveyed by the sentence ‘A hamlet on the Thames’.
If an implicit meaning the word sacrifice his primary sense of the original and expands further to give the sense implied. Here the preposition ‘to’ sacrifice their sense of original and gives rise to the implicit meaning called ‘the banks’. It is the difference implicit and explicit. It is important to know that these two words, namely, implicit and explicit are very important in the rhetoric and poetry. It is said that poets inhabit in these two types of meaning to a large extent.