syncopate
Americanverb (used with object)
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syncopates,
present (3rd person singular)
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syncopated,
past participle, past
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syncopating
present participle
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Music.
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to place (the accents) on beats that are normally unaccented.
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to treat (a passage, piece, etc.) in this way.
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Grammar. to contract (a word) by omitting one or more sounds from the middle, as in reducing Gloucester to Gloster.
verb
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music to modify or treat (a beat, rhythm, note, etc) by syncopation
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to shorten (a word) by omitting sounds or letters from the middle
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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syncopatesimple
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syncopatessimple
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have syncopatedperfect
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has syncopatedperfect
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am syncopatingprogressive
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are syncopatingprogressive
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is syncopatingprogressive
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have been syncopatingperfect progressive
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has been syncopatingperfect progressive
Past
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syncopatedsimple
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had syncopatedperfect
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was syncopatingprogressive
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were syncopatingprogressive
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had been syncopatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of syncopate
First recorded in 1600–10; Medieval Latin syncopātus (past participle of syncopāre “to shorten by syncope”); see syncope, -ate 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Most of the songs vamp through a handful of chords as Keys gives her voice room to leap, to curl, to muse, to syncopate; she has rarely sounded so jazzy and improvisatory.
From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2021
Not many, but enough to start infecting celebrations with doubt, to break up the exact time, the exact place, to syncopate something that used to be whole.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 2, 2019
During a show-pausing turn in “Mary Poppins Returns,” Lin-Manuel Miranda takes center stage to sing and syncopate, and the movie flickers to life.
From New York Times ● Dec. 18, 2018
From 1935 the itch to complicate and syncopate gets to him.
From Slate ● Dec. 18, 2010
Syncopate a square column, and leave an adhesive salve; syncopate the salve, and leave a person found in a bindery; syncopate again, and leave a prayer.
From St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 by Mary Mapes Dodge
“The way that he syncopates and phrases, if it’s not codified, then he escapes a dialogue about jazz piano history.”
From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2022
Langston syncopates his verbal abstractions in double time and then triple time, delivering conundrums like: “Creative manners to skip and erase from moment to moment/abstract, realist, most problematic version of futurism.”
From New York Times ● Jun. 17, 2022
A lovely painting that syncopates rectangles of black, red and teal hangs here next to a larger weaving with the same geometric arrangement.
From New York Times ● Nov. 26, 2021
He retains the MacNooder eloquence and syncopates it, polishing his quips for quotation, studying his audience.
From Time Magazine Archive
The theme again is "America" but it is mournful and bleeding now until the third movement, "1926," takes it up again and syncopates it.
From Time Magazine Archive
The teenager behind the kit is locked into “Driven to Tears,” the Police’s reggae-charged protest song, channeling its sharp, syncopated beats with controlled fury.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
House music, the post-disco form with a 4/4 rhythm and rubbery syncopated basslines, is the genre at the center of the LP, but there is plenty of variety.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
In court, Sheeran's team accepted that the two songs share a similar syncopated chord pattern.
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2025
Each one’s momentary glow pulses alive and fades in syncopated rhythm with the drowsy croaks of bullfrogs.
From Salon ● May 10, 2024
Music came in and out of my ears, a syncopated half song that was familiar and foreign at the same time.
From "When I Was Puerto Rican" by Esmeralda Santiago
A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eotvos composed “Angels” with speech morphing into song, syncopating percussion and electronic keyboards.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 9, 2017
Faced with Minnie Riperton’s kitschy, overblown “Give Me Time,” he comes up with a beautifully elliptical response, alternately swooning and syncopating, injecting a full minute of genuine pathos.
From Slate ● Dec. 22, 2016
Ragtime, the new music invented by black musicians, was shaking up the straightforward rhythms of the previous century and syncopating them irresistibly.
From The New Yorker ● Feb. 16, 2015
Ethel Waters has scarcely finished syncopating with Count Basic's Afric jazz band when Yehudi Menuhin steps forward to render Schubert's Ave Maria on his expensive violin.
From Time Magazine Archive
They lived precisely as the beasts in the jungle live—diversifying their periods of torpor with bursts of frantic vituperation and syncopating enjoyment.
From Command by William McFee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
