Apocope Totally Explained

Everything about Apocope totally explained

In phonology, apocope /əˈpɒkəpi/ or /əˈpɑkəpi/ (Greek apokoptein “cutting off” from apo- “away from” and koptein “to cut”) is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word; especially, the loss of an unstressed vowel.

Historical sound change

In historical phonetics, the term "apocope" is often but not always limited to the loss of an unstressed vowel.

Loss of an unstressed vowel (with nasal)

Vulgar Latin pan[em] > Spanish pan "bread"
Vulgar Latin lup[um] > French loup "wolf"
Latin strat[am] > English street

Loss of other sounds

Latin illu[d] > Spanish ello

Case marker

In the Estonian language and Sami language, a phenomenon is seen where apocope explains the forms of grammatical cases. For example, a nominative has apocope of the final vowel but the genitive does not; instead, the genitive case marker has undergone apocope: linn "a city", vs. linna "of a city", historically derived from *linna and *linnan, respectively.

Grammatical rule

Some languages have apocopations internalized as mandatory forms. In Spanish, for example, many adjectives that come before the noun lose the final vowel when they precede a noun in the masculine singular form. The word grande (big/great) becomes gran. In this cases, one would say gran aventura (great adventure) rather than grande aventura.

Poetic device

German ich gebe > poetic ich geb' "I give"

Informal speech

Various sorts of informal abbreviations might be classed as "apocope".

English photograph > photo

French réactionnaire > réac "reactionary"

English animation > Japanese anime-shon > anime

English synchronization > sync

English Alexander > Alex and so on with other diminutives For a list of similar apocopations in the English language, see List of English apocopations. These processes are also linguistically subsumed under a process called truncation.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Apocope'.

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