syncope

The elision or loss of a sound from the interior of a word, especially of a vowel sound with loss of a syllable.

Noun

  1. The elision or loss of a sound from the interior of a word, especially of a vowel sound with loss of a syllable.
    • […]; on the contrary, all syllables subject in the same way to elision, apocope, syncope, and slurring must have the same degree of stress (i.e. they must be alike unaccented) whether preceded by short or by long...

    Antonyms: epenthesis

    Hypernyms: metaplasm

    Coordinate Terms: apocope

  2. A loss of consciousness when fainting.
    • Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of semi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with...
    • Schneider, the father of rhinology, mentions a woman in whom the odor of orange-flowers produced syncope. - 1896, George M. Gould, Walter Lytle Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine:
    • […]the rapidly-whitening face, the miserable fixed smile, meant a syncope within the next few bars. - 1973, Patrick O'Brian, HMS Surprise:

    Synonyms: swoon faint fainting lipothymia

    Coordinate Terms: near-syncope presyncope pre-syncope pseudosyncope

  3. A missed beat or off-beat stress in music resulting in syncopation.
    • She was a volatile creature, full of mischievous surprise: at their first music practice, after playing over some hymns on the pipe-organ, she burst into jazz, filling the quiet grove with the clamorous syncope of...

Origin

Learned borrowing from Late Latin syncopē, from Ancient Greek συγκοπή (sunkopḗ), from συγκόπτω (sunkóptō, “cut up”) + -η (-ē, nominalization suffix), from σύν (sún, “beside, with”) + κόπτω (kóptō, “strike, cut off”). Partly continues the (near-)doublets syncopis and sincopin, both from the Old French sincopin (“faintness”) (itself from Late Latin accusative syncopen), with the pathological meaning "a loss of consciousness accompanied by a weak pulse", attested from the fifteenth century. Usage in the form syncope, with the phonological meaning "contraction of a word by omission of middle sounds or letters" attested from the 1520s. Syncopis and sincopin were "re-Latinized" to the form syncope in English in the sixteenth century. The musical usage first occurs after the 1660s, following the musical usage of syncopation and syncopate.

Forms

syncopes syncopé

Derived

micturition syncope nonsyncopated post-micturition syncope syncopal syncopate syncopation syncopic syncopist syncopize unsyncopated