Entertainment / Literature / Syncope: When a desperate poet drops a vowel sound between two consonants to make the meter match in each line. It can also be used as a rhetorical device any time a writer deletes a syllable or letter from the middle of a word. For instance, in Cymbeline, Shakespeare writes of how, 'Thou thy worldy task hast done, / Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages' (4.2.258). In 2 Henry IV, we hear a flatterer say, 'Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time' (1.2.112). Here, the -i- in saltiness has vanished to create a new word. Syncope is an example of a rhetorical scheme.
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Entertainment / Literature / Elision: (verb form, elide) (1) In poetry, when the poet takes a word that ends in a vowel, and a following word that begins with a vowel, and blurs them together to create a single syllable, the result is an MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Apocope: Deleting a syllable or letter from the end of a word. In The Merchant of Venice, one character says, 'when I ope my lips let no dog bark,' and the last syllable of open falls away into ope before the MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Syncopated: A syncopated word has lost a sound or letter. This syncopation happens because of contractions, linguistic erosion over time, or intentional poetic artifice. See syncope. MORE