APHESIS

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APHESIS [Stress: ‘AH-fe-sis’]. The loss of an unstressed vowel at the beginning of a WORD, as in prentice from apprentice, sometimes leading to a word with a new meaning and use: lone from alone, slant from aslant, squire from esquire. Younger children often speak aphetically, a style that Rudyard Kipling imitates in Just So Stories (1902), marking the loss with an apostrophe: 'Stute Fish, 'scruciating idle, 'sclusively bare, 'satiable curiosity. See APH(A)ERESIS, ELISION.

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