Apocope
End-Cut
Apocope is an etymological figure of speech in which the final letter or syllable of a word is cut off. The figure affects spelling rather than sense: it surfaces in the transition between older and younger linguistic forms where endings drop away. In Scripture its effect is minimal because Hebrew and Greek themselves do not employ the figure — Apocope appears almost exclusively in translation.
Etymology
Greek ἀποκοπή (apokopê), “a cutting off”, from the verb ἀποκόπτειν (apokoptein), “to cut off” — a compound of ἀπό (apo, “away from”) and κόπτειν (koptein, “to cut”). Bullinger renders the English equivalent as END-CUT.
Definition
The figure is the omission of a letter or syllable at the end of a word. English examples: yon for yonder, after for afterward. The figure is purely morphological — no rhetorical effect, no theological weight. Bullinger includes it for the sake of classificatory completeness rather than for exegetical relevance.
Biblical Examples
In Scripture, Apocope occurs only in translation, never in the original text:
- Jude 1:1 — Jude for Judas in the English rendering. The Greek simply has Ἰούδας; the cut arises only in the English form.
Bullinger explicitly notes that there is no Apocope in the Greek, and the figure carries no independent theological instruction — it is an artefact of the target language.
Related Figures
- aphaeresis — front-cut; the mirror figure in which the beginning of a word is cut off
Source
E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (1898), p. 150.