Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Grammar The shortening of a word by omission of a sound, letter, or syllable from the middle of the word; for example, bos'n for boatswain.
- n. Pathology A brief loss of consciousness caused by a temporary deficiency of oxygen in the brain; a swoon. See Synonyms at blackout.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The contraction of a word by elision; an elision or retrenchment of one or more letters or a syllable from the middle of a word, as in ne'er for never. See also syncopation, syncopate. Compare apocope.
- n. In medicine, loss of consciousness from fall of blood-pressure and consequent cerebral anemia; fainting. It may be induced by cardiac weakness or inhibition, hemorrhage, or probably visceral vasomotor relaxation.
- n. A sudden pause or cessation; a suspension; temporary stop or inability to go on.
- n. In music: Same as syncopation.
- n. The combination of two voice-parts so that two or more tones in one coincide with a single tone in the other; simple figuration.
- n. In ancient prosody, omission, or apparent omission, of an arsis in the interior of a line. This omission is usually only apparent, the long of the thesis being protracted to make up the time of the syllable or syllables which seem to be wanting: as,
for (a trisemic long), for (a tetrasemic long). This application of the term is modern.
Wiktionary
- n. A loss of consciousness when someone faints, a swoon.
- n. A missing sound from the interior of a word, for example by changing cannot to can't or the pronunciation of placenames in -cester (e.g. Leicester) as -ster.
- n. A missed beat or off-beat stress in music resulting in syncopation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An elision or retrenchment of one or more letters or syllables from the middle of a word; as,
ne'er fornever ,ev'ry forevery . - n. Same as Syncopation.
- n. A fainting, or swooning. See Fainting.
- n. A pause or cessation; suspension.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (phonology) the loss of sounds from within a word (as in `fo'c'sle' for `forecastle')
- n. a spontaneous loss of consciousness caused by insufficient blood to the brain
Etymologies
- Middle English sincopis, from sincopene, from Late Latin syncopēn, accusative of syncopē, from Greek sunkopē, from sunkoptein, to cut short : sun-, syn- + koptein, to strike.
Examples
“Near-syncope is light-headedness due to the same cause.”
“For musicians, syncope is a rhythmic form that subverts the order of stress in the bar and puts stress on what is regularly unstressed.”
“In a 1949 article in the New Yorker (now the Nyawka), John Davenport commented on “Slurvian,” the language of what linguists call syncope (“SING-kuh-pee”).”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“The above is a classic presentation of syncope, which is defined as a transient, self-correcting loss of responsiveness and postural tone.”
“Some symptoms St. Jude cited include a sudden loss of consciousness called syncope, palpitations and shortness of breath.”
Minneapolis Business News - Local Minneapolis News | The Minneapolis / St Paul Business Journal
“In the medical terminology of the period, fainting, swooning, and various states that involve the loss of sensation or consciousness are referred to by the technical terms "syncope" and "lipothymy" (or lypothymia).”
“If we assume these arose from some kind of syncope on the second syllable then we should expects all manner of internal clusters, yet only a few combinations are found.”
Laryngeal abuse - Phonemes caught in the reconstructive crossfire
“Death, he said, was the result of "syncope," or a dramatic drop in blood pressure.”
Portrait of a Killer
“But in the expression of her countenance there was no character of suffering or distress; on the contrary, a wondrous serenity, that made her beauty more beauteous, her very youthfulness younger; and when this spurious or partial kind of syncope passed, she recovered at once without effort, without acknowledging that she had felt faint or unwell, but rather with a sense of recruited vitality, as the weary obtain from a sleep.”
“The patient's main reason for admission is not his "syncope" and they had done a great job on the main problem.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘syncope’.
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G[r]eek
A collection of words found in English that are either purely Greek or have Greek etymology.
Please add with caution and certainty. Will be regularly updated by me.etymology, philosophy, laconic, disharmony, patriarchic, archaic, phlogiston, aether, aeon, angel, arachnid, rhythm and 322 more...
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The Latin Doctor is Greek to me
Biology Students, Gladiators, Devil Dogs & Harry Potter
et tu, semper fidelis, carpe diem, cui bono, pons asinorum, limbus, e pluribus unum, sine qua non, quidnunc, lacus oblivionis, quincunx, experimentum crucis and 128 more...
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Rhetorical Devices
syllepsis, zeugma, trope, wellerism, anastrophe, anaphora, apostrophe, metonymy, chiasmus, antimetabole, syncope, open-list and 431 more...
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Neologistics
Basically this is a "words about words" list with a focus on neologism generation in all its various forms.
wordplay, paronomasia, madeupical, logodaedaly, onomatopoeic, verbification, nominalization, recontextualization, spoonerism, typo recycling, sloganeer, wordsmith and 59 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 7 more...
manilamac ‘T is pity, but e’en your expanded examples have naught but pathological applications, the grammar’s omitted. Oct 1, 2009