syncope
Sign in to savelinguistic process whereby weak phonemes disappear from words
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
In phonology, syncope (/ˈsɪŋkəpi/; from Ancient Greek: συγκοπή, romanized: sunkopḗ, lit. 'cutting up') is the loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel. It is found in both synchronic and diachronic analyses of languages. Its opposite, whereby sounds are added, is epenthesis.
Synchronic analysis
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “syncope” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.