Apocope

In historical linguistics, apocope is often the loss of an unstressed vowel.

In Estonian and the Sami languages, apocopes explain the forms of grammatical cases.

Throughout its history, however, the genitive case marker has also undergone apocope: Estonian linn ("a city") and linna ("of a city") are derived from linna and linnan respectively, as can still be seen in the corresponding Finnish word.

In Colloquial Finnish, the final vowel is sometimes omitted from case markers.

In Spanish, some adverbs and cardinal and ordinal numbers have apocopations as well.