the elision of a syllable beginning with a short vowel and ending with an m when that syllable occurs at the end of a word and before another word beginning with either a vowel or an h
ecthlipsis in American English
(ekˈθlɪpsɪs)
nounWord forms: plural-ses (-siz)
loss of a consonant, esp., in Latin, loss of a final m before a word beginning with a vowel or h
Word origin
[1650–60; ‹ LL ‹ Gk ékthlīpsis, equiv. to ekthli᷇b(ein) to squeeze out (ek-ec- + thli᷇bein, var. of phli᷇bein to squeeze) + -sis-sis]This word is first recorded in the period 1650–60. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: agency, burlesque, cardholder, profile, triplet-sis is a suffix appearing in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form from verbsabstract nouns of action, process, state, condition, etc. Other words that use theaffix -sis include: anamnesis, crisis, dieresis, symbiosis, thesis