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
For there the need for quick action, which in life tends to syncopate emotion, does not exist.
From The Principles of Aesthetics by Dewitt H. Parker
“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
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
He retains the MacNooder eloquence and syncopates it, polishing his quips for quotation, studying his audience.
From Time Magazine Archive
The jungle music they had a hand in creating is still to this day characterised by its speed, syncopated rhythms, breakbeats and ragga, funk and reggae samples.
From BBC ● Oct. 31, 2026
The production features a fusion of reggaeton drum patterns and syncopated kicks with the Middle Eastern darbuka, as well as violins, which softly emanate a minor microtonal scale in the background.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026
And the clattering syncopated loop that repeats through “Oblivion” is there mostly as a contrast to the wispy and diaphanous vocals, which are so thin and leavened with reverb that they threaten to float away.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
In court, Sheeran's team accepted that the two songs share a similar syncopated chord pattern.
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2025
When students hear the syncopated rhythm, they should walk to the rhythm short-long-short-long, freeze in place, or clap.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
The song is a masterclass in production, pulling and syncopating a sample from iconic dance hall tune “Coolie Dance Riddim,” released by Jamaican producer Cordel Skatta Burrell in 2003.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026
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
One of them near him was breathing in a see-saw, drilling tone, whilst another kept syncopating this song with a sharp and shrill tsit, tsit.
From The Pobratim A Slav Novel by P. Jones
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