syllabication

plural syllabications · alternative sillabication

1. countableuncountableThe act of syllabifying; syllabification.

   I sweare unto thee by the crisse-crosse row, by the whole Alphabet, and Sillabication of the letters.

   1631, James Mabbe, tr. of Fernando de Rojas’s 1499 The Spanish Bawd, represented in Celestina: or, The Tragicke-comedy of Calisto and Melibea, chapter 18, page 180

   2 more examples

   Instances both of the unemphatic do and of the distinct syllabication of the final ed are numerous in the present play.

   1857, George Lillie Craik, The English of Shakespeare, part 2: “Philological Commentary on Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar”, act 1, scene 1, page 73

   syllabicate 2    syllabication 1 syllabify 2      syllabification 1 syllabize 1     syllabization 3 One first-class verb, two first-class nouns, but neither of those nouns belonging to that verb. It is absurd enough, & any of several ways out would do; that indeed is why none of them is taken. The best thing would be to accept the most recognized verb syllabize, give it the now non-existent noun syllabization, & relegate all the rest to the Superfluous words; but there is no authority both willing & able to issue such decrees.

   1926, Henry Watson Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1st ed., Oxford at the Clarendon Press), page 590, column 2, “syllabize &c.” syllabize &c. A verb & a noun are clearly sometimes needed for the notion of dividing words into syllables. The possible pairs seem to be the following (the number after each word means — 1, that it is in fairly common use; 2, that it is on record; 3, that it is not given in OED): — syllabate 3 syllabation 2