Apocopation

An apocopation is a shortened form of a word, usually one in which the end is cut off. Sometimes "apocopation" is used only to cover apocope, in which the end is cut off, as distinguished from procope, in which the beginning is cut off.

Some languages have apocopations internalized as mandatory forms. In Spanish, for instance, many adjectives that come before the noun lose the ending when they precede a noun in the masculine singular form. The word uno (one) thus becomes un and grande (big) becomes gran. In these cases, one would say un mundo (one world) rather than *uno mundo, and gran taco (big taco), rather than *grande taco.

In many languages, apocopation can be used to form a shorter synonym, a sort of spoken abbreviation, of a word, and in many it is used to form an informal name of something. In French, for instance, réac is used as short for réactionnaire and démo means démonstration. Japanese shorten their name for McDonald's, Makudonarudo, into Makudo, and Kentaki Furaido Chikin, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, is referred to as Kenfuraido in daily speech. George Orwell was aware of the power of apocopation when he designed Newspeak; saying the four-letter Nazi rather than the full name Nationalsozialist allowed one to make a quick reference to the party without having to go over the words and think about what the concept implied: national, socialism. For this reason Newspeak aimed for bisyllabic words.

Apocopation is regularly done with the diminutive forms of names: Tom for Thomas, Steve for Stephan, Josh for Joshua, Matt for Matthew, Don for Donald, Tony for Anthony, Alex for Alexander, Andy for Andrew, Meg for Meghan, Liz for Elizabeth.

Some apocopations in English:

When apocopation is done with Cockney rhyming slang, it is called hemiteleia:

See also: abbreviation, acronym, initialism.\n