syncopation

Meaning

Noun

• The contraction of a word by means of loss or omission of sounds or syllables in the middle thereof.
• The quality of a rhythm being somehow unexpected, in that it deviates from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats in a meter.

Origin

• syncopate + -ion The phonological sense first attested in English in the 1530's, the musical sense in the 1590's.