{"id":8750,"date":"2013-06-18T10:55:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T10:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=8750"},"modified":"2013-06-18T10:55:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T10:55:14","slug":"apocope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=8750","title":{"rendered":"Apocope"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned a new word today – apocope<\/strong> [\u0259\u02c8p\u0252k\u0259pi\u02d0], which is the loss of phonemes from the ends of words, particularly unstressed vowels.<\/p>\n

It comes from the Greek word \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03cc\u03c0\u03c4\u03c9<\/em> (apokoptein), which means ‘cutting off’ and comes from \u1f00\u03c0\u03cc<\/em> (apo-), ‘away’ and \u03ba\u03cc\u03c0\u03c4\u03c9<\/em> (koptein), ‘to cut’. <\/p>\n

Apocope is a mechanism which erodes some inflections and other word endings, and creates new ones, when words that were once separate become bound together. It also refers to the process of abbreviating words by dropping their endings.<\/p>\n

Here are some examples:
\n– p\u0101nis<\/em> (Latin for bread) > pan(em)<\/em> (Vulgar Latin)> pan (Spanish), pane (Italian), pain (French), pa\u00f5 (Portuguese)
\n– advertisement > advert > ad
\n– photographh > photo
\n– credibility > cred
\n– barbecue > barbie
\n– fanatic > fan<\/p>\n

The term for phonemes being dropped from the beginning of a word is apheresis (\/\u0259\u02c8f\u025br\u0268s\u026as\/), Here are some examples:<\/p>\n

– esquire > squire
\n– knife (\/\u02c8kna\u026af\/) > \/\u02c8na\u026af\/ – the k was pronounced in Middle English
\n– telephone > phone
\n– ysbwriel > sbwriel (Welsh for rubbish, litter)
\n– ysgrifennu > sgrifennu (Welsh for to write), which has become sgwennu in some dialects of Welsh.<\/p>\n

When a word loses internal phonemes, the process is known as syncope (\/\u02c8s\u026a\u014bk\u0259pi\u02d0\/). Examples include:<\/p>\n

– forecastle > fo\u2019c\u2019s\u2019le
\n– never > n’er (poetic)
\n– over > o’er (poetic)<\/p>\n

Source: Wikipedia<\/a>, World Wide Words<\/a> and About.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I learned a new word today – apocope [\u0259\u02c8p\u0252k\u0259pi\u02d0], which is the loss of phonemes from the ends of words, particularly unstressed vowels. It comes from the Greek word \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03cc\u03c0\u03c4\u03c9 (apokoptein), which means ‘cutting off’ and comes from \u1f00\u03c0\u03cc (apo-), ‘away’ and \u03ba\u03cc\u03c0\u03c4\u03c9 (koptein), ‘to cut’. Apocope is a mechanism which erodes some inflections and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,118,10,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-greek","category-language","category-linguistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}