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Literary notes about syncope (AI summary)

In literature, syncope serves a dual purpose by capturing both a dramatic medical condition and a stylistic linguistic phenomenon. On one hand, authors employ syncope to depict sudden collapse or fainting—a moment of life suspended or a herald of impending death, as seen in accounts of poisoning, heart failure, or overwhelming shock [1, 2, 3, 4]. On the other hand, the term appears in discussions of language and verse, where it describes the deliberate omission of sounds or letters (for instance, the dropping of vowels) to achieve a desired rhythmic or metrical effect [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. This versatility enables writers to enrich both narrative tension and poetic form, seamlessly intertwining medical imagery with technical linguistic precision.
  1. Frequently sudden and fatal syncope occurs, due to heart weakness or to the pouring out of fluid into the pleural or the pericardial cavities.
    — from Scurvy, Past and Present by Alfred F. Hess
  2. 1. Syncope is death beginning at the heart—in other words, failure of circulation.
    — from Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology by W. G. Aitchison (William George Aitchison ) Robertson
  3. 'He had died suddenly from syncope, or heart-failure.
    — from Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, September 10, 1892 by Various
  4. It was syncope of the heart, and was most likely almost instantaneous.
    — from Monica: A Novel, Volume 2 (of 3) by Evelyn Everett-Green
  5. It is the opposite of syncope of vowels ( 110 , 111 ).
    — from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane
  6. Sometimes a vowel drops out by syncope; as,— ārdor for āridor (compare āridus ); valdē for validē (compare validus ).
    — from New Latin Grammar by Charles E. (Charles Edwin) Bennett
  7. Disappearance of an initial consonant is sometimes called Aphaeresis , of a medial, Syncope , of a final, Apocope .
    — from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane
  8. Syncope , defined, 111 , 168 , 2508 ; in versification, 2541 .
    — from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane
  9. This verse is a trochaic tetrameter acatalectic, with syncope and protraction in the seventh foot.
    — from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

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