Dictionary
syn•co•pa•tion
Pronunciation: (sing"ku-pā'shun, sin"-), [key]—
n.
1. Music.a shifting of the normal accent, usually by stressing the normally unaccented beats.
2. something, as a rhythm or a passage of music, that is syncopated.
3. Also called
counterpoint, counterpoint rhythm. Pros.the use of rhetorical stress at variance with the metrical stress of a line of verse, as the stress on
and and
of in
Come praise Colonus' horses and come praise/The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies.
4. Gram.syncope.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.