apocope
Sign in to savethumb|Supermarket aisle sign in Calgary, Canada, in 2025, showing apocope of -ed in etymological canned meat and canned vegetables but not in Mexican
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
9 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Historical sound change
- Examples of the loss of an unstressed vowel and/or nasal consonant
- Examples of the loss of other sounds
- Grammatical rule
- Economy of expression
- See also
- References
- External links
thumb|Supermarket aisle sign in Calgary, Canada, in 2025, showing apocope of -ed in etymological canned meat and canned vegetables but not in Mexican
In phonology, apocope ( ) is the omission (elision) or loss of a sound or sounds at the end of a word. While it most commonly refers to the loss of a final vowel, it can also describe the deletion of final consonants or even entire syllables.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “apocope” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.