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syncopate

[sing-kuh-peyt, sin-] / ˈsɪŋ kəˌpeɪt, ˈsɪn- /




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

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

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

He retains the MacNooder eloquence and syncopates it, polishing his quips for quotation, studying his audience.

From Time Magazine Archive

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

The staging, which can seem cluttered and breathless in the early going, traipses through these seedy locales with a theatrical swiftness that captures the milieu that bred the syncopated rhythm of the Jazz Age.

From Los Angeles Times Jun. 4, 2024

Each one’s momentary glow pulses alive and fades in syncopated rhythm with the drowsy croaks of bullfrogs.

From Salon May 10, 2024

Much of the fighting’s rhythm seems syncopated to that of another century: trenches dug into unrelenting mud, the slide of flip-flops down monsoon-soaked hills, the clatter of homemade AK-style assault rifles in dusty towns.

From New York Times Apr. 20, 2024

The Dancing Fan was still dancing, its rubber feet beating out the same syncopated Persian rhythm I’d been listening to all night, but that wasn’t what woke me.

From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram

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

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 Jones, P.




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