Emily Dickinson Lexicon

SYN-CO-PA'TION, n.

1. The contraction of a word by taking a letter, letters or a syllable from the middle.
2. In music, an interruption of the regular measure; an inversion of the order of notes; a prolonging of a note begun on the unaccented part of a bar, to the accented part of the next bar; also, a driving note, when a shorter note at the beginning of a measure is followed by two or more longer notes before another short note occurs, equal to that which occasioned the driving, to make the number even. – Encyc.