ELIDE
(ih-LEYED)
Omit
a sound or syllable when speaking Common clues: Eliminate
a syllable, perhaps; Slur over; Skip a syllable, e.g.; Omit in
speech; Omit in pronunciation; Pass over; Leave out; Say
“somethin'”; Apocopate Crossword
puzzle frequency:
3 times a year Video: Word
of the Week
Elision
is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a
consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase, producing a
result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes,
sounds may be elided for euphonic effect.
A
word or phrase may be spelled the same as it is spoken in the
script for a theatre play in order to show the actual speech of a
character.
Elision
is normally unintentional, but it may be deliberate. The result
may be impressionistically described as "slurred" or
"muted."
An
example of deliberate elision occurs in Latin poetry as a
stylistic device. Under certain circumstances, such as one word
ending in a vowel and the following word beginning in a vowel,
the words may be elided together. Elision was a common device in
the works of Catullus. For example, the opening line of Catullus
3 is: Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque, but would be read as Lugeto
Veneres Cupidinesque.
The
elided form of a word or phrase may become a standard alternative
for the full form, if used often enough. In English, this is
called a contraction, such as can't from cannot. Contraction
differs from elision in that contractions are set forms that have
morphologized, but elisions are not.
A
synonym for elision is syncope, though the latter term is most
often associated with the elision of vowels between consonants
(e.g., Latin tabula → Spanish tabla). Another form of
elision is aphesis, which means elision at the beginning of a
word (generally of an unstressed vowel).
The
opposite of elision is epenthesis, whereby sounds are inserted
into a word to ease pronunciation.
Even
though the effort that it takes to pronounce a word does not hold
any influence in writing, a word or phrase may be spelled the
same as it is spoken, for example, in poetry or in the script for
a theatre play, in order to show the actual speech of a
character. It may also be used in an attempt to transcribe
non-standard speech. Also, some kinds of elision (as well as
other phonological devices) are commonly used in poetry in order
to preserve a particular rhythm.
In
some languages employing the Latin alphabet, such as English, the
omitted letters in a contraction are replaced by an apostrophe.
Greek, which uses its own alphabet, marks elision in the same
way.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Elision".
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