the.com/syncope

means A brief loss of consciousness caused by a temporary drop in blood flow to the brain — and, in grammar/music, the clipping or dropping of something from the middle (a sound, a letter, a beat).

from From Greek synkope, 'a cutting off, a cutting short' — built from syn- ('together') and koptein ('to cut, to strike'). The Greeks first used it for anything abruptly severed or curtailed, including a sudden cutting-off of strength or breath, which is how it came to mean fainting. The same root gave grammarians a word for dropping a syllable mid-word, and musicians a word for displacing a beat — all of them, in essence, something expected being 'cut off' before its time.