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Showing results for syncopate. Search instead for syncopative.
Definitions

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

Standing in a line, they fall into syncopated steps, slowly coming together for a single breath and hunch.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 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

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

From Salon ● May 10, 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

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

It presented itself to him as a picture—legs moving against the walls of buildings, diagonals of bodies, syncopating face lines.

From Erik Dorn by Ben Hecht




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