Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Grammar To shorten (a word) by syncope.
- v. Music To modify (rhythm) by syncopation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To contract, as a word, by taking one or more letters or syllables from the middle, as exemplified in Gloster for Gloucester.
- In music, to affect by syncopation.
Wiktionary
- v. transitive, linguistics to omit a sound or a letter from a word; to use syncope
- v. transitive, music to stress or accentuate the weak beat of a rhythm; to use syncopation
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. (Gram.) To contract, as a word, by taking one or more letters or syllables from the middle.”
- v. (Mus.) To commence, as a tone, on an unaccented part of a measure, and continue it into the following accented part, so that the accent is driven back upon the weak part and the rhythm drags.
WordNet 3.0
- v. modify the rhythm by stressing or accenting a weak beat
- v. omit a sound or letter in a word
Etymologies
- From Medieval Latin syncopātus, past particple of syncopō, from Late Latin syncopa, from Ancient Greek σύν (syn, "with") + κόπτω (kopto, "cut") (Wiktionary)
- Late Latin syncopāre, syncopāt-, from syncopē, syncope; see syncope. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Every ragtime or jazz enthusiast knows that when you syncopate from the Greek for “cut short”, you begin a note on a weak beat in the bar, sustaining it into the accented part, thereby shifting the accent.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“All syncopate smartly, but the big surprise is Ken Peplowski's clarinet, which adds a swinging blue coolness to the festive heat, particularly on "Sleigh Ride" and "Winter Wonderland.”
“Shifts in density created by clusters of strokes now more open, now more closed animate and syncopate the upper regions, like variations in the density of a canopy of trees with different habits of growth.”
“I let these sounds syncopate the air coming in and out of my lungs, and concentrating, like this, on the most basic block of life, I fall asleep.”
“She cradles Cisco in her arms and lap, rocking him as if to sleep, and her screams syncopate with every motion forward.”
“The camera cuts help syncopate this–we are on the train, and the billboards change, but before we can see the final billboard flip over we go into the tunnel…”
“You enter through that wall, and they'll have a wall of water, and they're going to try to syncopate it to the actual rhythm of Dr. King's voice.”
“I mean, I think the way that he said to me is like ` You know, wouldn't it be great if you could syncopate Bartok? ”
“God" is ghmerto, and this passage includes a case form that forces that poor lonely e, stuck between two consonant clusters, to syncopate, yielding ghmrtisi.”
“In grammar, you syncopate by snipping a word short or by skipping one or two syllables in the middle.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘syncopate’.
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MUSIC - jazz
Afro, habanera, pentatonic scale, bop, bebop, jazz, cool jazz, pentatonic, malignment, music genre, jazz musician, syncopate and 437 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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the beat & the break
words relating to rhythm
syncope, ascensional, sonant, syncopate, assonance, caesura, prosody, modulation, cadence, rhythm, interval, clitter and 34 more...
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Shorten
Verbs meaning shorten
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Lively Words
quick, quicksilver, cwic, quitch grass, cwice, vivify, viviparous, viper, weever, wyvern, viand, victual and 148 more...
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Quick Before You Forget
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Manji's Random Wordlist
The title says it all
velour, vivacity, subterfuge, sable, divination, gentry, vindication, compendium, pistons, metamorphosis, methodology, polyphony and 91 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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artoparts's Words
illation, finite, edify, abide, abrade, vouch, amiss, vociferate, perusing, techantiquery, rigamarole, holon and 615 more...
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the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
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Oblivion
By David Foster Wallace
ossify, reverie, hypergeometric, emetic, mien, cruciform, accreted, perpend, rheostat, predilections, coccyx, hirsute and 178 more...
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Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do!
Musical words
aria, scherzo, lilting, tango, crescendo, diminuendo, jazz, dulcet, cadence, serenade, poliphony, largo and 26 more...
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Erudite Vocab
coruscate, abscond, deracinate, dragoon, encumber, excoriate, exsanguinate, pestilence, extirpate, gambol, immolate, impugn and 85 more...
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creagr's Words
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jkoshi's Words
Tweets
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