Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, as in Modern English sing from Middle English singen.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In grammar, the cutting off or omission of the last letter or syllable of a word, as in th' for the, i' for in.
  • noun In surgery, a wound with loss of substance; ablation; amputation.
  • noun [capitalized] [NL.] In zoology, a genus of plec-tospondylous fishes, of the family Cyprinidæ. It contains several species of western North America, such as A. couesi. E. D. Cope, 1871.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The cutting off, or omission, of the last letter, syllable, or part of a word.
  • noun (Med.) A cutting off; abscission.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun prosody The loss or omission of a sound or syllable from the end of a word.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun abbreviation of a word by omitting the final sound or sounds

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin, from Greek apokopē, from apokoptein, to cut off : apo-, apo- + koptein, to cut.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin, from Ancient Greek ἀποκοπή (apokopḗ), ἀποκόπτω (apokóptō, "cut off").

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Examples

Comments

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  • You spammer. ;-)

    March 6, 2007

  • loss or omission of the last letter, syllable, or particle word. (as in 'darlin' used for 'darling')

    October 25, 2007

  • Thosefinches, I have a list of these, if you care to suggest any others. :-)

    Oh, and great name, by the way.

    October 25, 2007

  • Preferred rhetorical device of the Aussies, e.g. barbie for barbeque (or "barbecue" if you must).

    April 6, 2008

  • JM cannot cope with more than 3 apocopes a day - otherwise he pulls up too short.

    January 10, 2011

  • JM is looking for a handy tool to perform apocope on overly long words – like pruning is with plants so it will be with language – at least that’s what I reck’n.

    April 28, 2011

  • I want to build a table on this word, invite over adelaide (she’s too “modern” for capitalization) and her pal the abbé, and serve them edda.

    September 18, 2011