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1910, Jakob Schipper, A History of English Versification:
[…]; on the contrary, all syllables subject in the same way to elision, apocope, syncope, and slurring must have the same degree of stress (i.e. they must be alike unaccented) whether preceded by short or by long root-syllables.
Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of semi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation.
1896, George M. Gould, Walter Lytle Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine:
Schneider, the father of rhinology, mentions a woman in whom the odor of orange-flowers produced syncope.
She was a volatile creature, full of mischievous surprise: at their first music practice, after playing over some hymns on the pipe-organ, she burst into jazz, filling the quiet grove with the clamorous syncope of Paddy-Paws, a favourite song that summer.
Usage notes
Usage in the form syncope, with the phonological meaning "contraction of a word by omission of middle sounds or letters" attested from the 1520's. Doublets of said syncope with the form syncopis and sincopin, both from the Old French sincopin(“faintness”) (itself from Late Latin accusative syncopen), with the pathological meaning "a loss of consciousness accompanied by a weak pulse", attested from the fifteenth century. Said syncopis / sincopin was "re-latinized" to the form syncope in English in the sixteenth century, after the linguistic use of that word was already in use. The musical usage first occurs after the 1660's, following the musical usage of syncopation and syncopate.
(linguistics,phonology,prosody) the loss or elision of a sound from the interior of a word (for example the change of Dutch veder in veer "feather"); syncope
(pathology) a loss of consciousness when someone faints, a swoon; syncope
(music) a missed beat or off-beat stress in music resulting in syncopation; syncope