<p><strong>Noun:</strong></p><ul><li>A shifting of the normal accent, usually by stressing the normally unaccented beats.</li><li>Something, as a rhythm or a passage of music, that is syncopated.</li><li>Also called counterpoint.</li><li>The use of rhetorical stress at variance with the metrical stress of a line of verse, as the stress on "and" and "of" in "Come praise Colonus' horses and come praise/The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies."</li><li>Grammar: syncope.</li></ul>