syncopate
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.
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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
He says "Were going to syncopate our watches."
From No title by
“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
But when they’re outdoors, at least, the color syncopates the seams.
From New York Times ● Jun. 29, 2017
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
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He retains the MacNooder eloquence and syncopates it, polishing his quips for quotation, studying his audience.
From Time Magazine Archive
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The following “Lazy Daisy,” built around a loop of syncopated electronic percussion, is defined by its use of space.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026
Each one’s momentary glow pulses alive and fades in syncopated rhythm with the drowsy croaks of bullfrogs.
From Salon ● May 10, 2024
While still a teenager, Mr. Wakefield mastered the heavily syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who immediately recognized Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.
From New York Times ● May 2, 2024
To test the concept, he stripped the album track Back On Your Radio down to its bare essentials, and rebuilt it around a syncopated dembow beat and dreamy Balearic synths.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2023
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
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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
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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 McFee, William