noun
- Plural of apocope; instances of the omission or loss of one or more sounds or letters at the end of a word.
Usage: linguistics; formal
Examples
- In English, apocopes are common in informal speech, such as 'lab' from 'laboratory'.
- The word 'phone' is an apocope of 'telephone'.
- Linguists study apocopes to understand how languages evolve over time.
- Many apocopes occur in casual conversation but are later adopted into standard dictionaries.
- The term 'apocopes' refers to multiple instances of word-final sound loss across different words.