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Definition of "synchronic" [synchronic]

  • Synchronous. (adjective)
  • Of or relating to the study of phenomena, such as linguistic features, or of events of a particular time, without reference to their historical context. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "synchronic" in a sentence
  • "That is, the events of the poem, hardly events at all in synchronic readings, do not share any sort of cause-effect relationship and do not cohere into any sort of continuous, temporal structure."
  • "In what one might call a synchronic wingnut collision, far-right American commentator Joseph Sobran turns out to be a Shakespeare authorer."
  • "The consensus, evident in the work of critics ranging from Minna Doskow and Joanne Witke to Vincent de Luca and Morton Paley, holds that Jerusalem has no narrative per se spanning its 100 plates, but rather exhibits what Morton Paley calls a "synchronic" structure. ["