elision

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin ēlīsiō (“a forcing out; in grammar, the dropping of a letter or syllable”),^[2][3][4][5] the grammatical use being recorded in Latin from the 3rd century.^[2] Barnhart takes the word through Middle French élision,^[6][7] while the OED, revising the entry, gives it as a borrowing from Latin and only compares the French word, recorded from 1548.^[2] The Latin noun is formed from ēlīsus, the past participle of ēlīdō (“to strike out, force out”),^[3][2][5][8] which is formed from ē- (“out”) and laedō (“to strike, hurt”).^[2][5][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The omission of a letter or syllable in pronunciation: before 1586, in Sir Philip Sidney's An Apologie for Poetrie.^[2] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date the word to 1581, Barnhart naming the same work,^[7][9] and Etymonline to the 1580s.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline, quoting Saintsbury, points out that in prosody it properly meant a vowel at the end of a word vanishing, or being ignored in the metre, before a vowel or h opening the next word, and that it was commonly extended to vowels crushed out within a word, as in di(a)mond.^[8] Johnson (1755) gave two senses, the cutting off of a syllable and "division; separation of parts", the second quoting Bacon on the elision of the air as a supposed cause of sound.^[10] That physical sense, of breaking or striking so as to force a gap, is recorded from 1615 to 1881.^[2] The idea of cutting out spread to passages of text and parts of an account by 1812, in Byron.^[2] It later also came to mean merging: of sounds or words from 1855, and of concepts or facts, blurred into one another, from 1958.^[2]

Timeline

• before 1586 – the omission of a letter or syllable in pronunciation.^[2] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster give 1581.^[7][9]
• 1615 – breaking or striking with physical force (obsolete by 1881).^[2]
• 1812 – the suppression of a passage in a book or part of an account.^[2]
• 1855 – the merging or blending of sounds or words.^[2]
• 1958 – the conflation of concepts or facts.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The leaving out of a vowel, consonant or syllable in speech, especially where one word ends in a vowel and the next begins with one: The elision in "she's" drops the vowel of "is".^[11][3][9]
2. In verse, the suppression or running together of syllables to fit the metre.^[9][3]
3. The omission of any part, especially of a passage in a text or part of an account.^[11][3][2]
4. The merging of concepts or facts, so that one is blurred into another.^[2]
5. (obsolete, 1615–1881) Breaking or striking with force, so as to split something or make a gap.^[2][12][10]

Related words

• elide
• allision
• collide
• collision
• lesion

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press