- prominence of a syllable in terms of differential loudness, or of pitch, or length, or of a combination of these.
- degree of prominence of a syllable within a word and sometimes of a word within a phrase: primary accent; secondary accent.
- a mark indicating stress (as (ˈ, ˌ), or (′, ″)), vowel quality (as French grave `, acute ´, circumflex ^ ), form (as French la “the” versus là “there”), or pitch.
- any similar mark.
- Prosody.
- regularly recurring stress.
- a mark indicating stress or some other distinction in pronunciation or value.
- a musical tone or pattern of pitch inherent in a particular language either as a feature essential to the identification of a vowel or a syllable or to the general acoustic character of the language.
- Often accents.
- the unique speech patterns, inflections, choice of words, etc., that identify a particular individual: We recognized his accents immediately. She corrected me in her usual mild accents.
- the distinctive style or tone characteristic of an author, composer, etc.: the unmistakably Brahmsian accents of the sonata; She recognized the familiar accents of Robert Frost in the poem.
- a mode of pronunciation, as pitch or tone, emphasis pattern, or intonation, characteristic of or peculiar to the speech of a particular person, group, or locality: French accent; Southern accent.
- such a mode of pronunciation recognized as being of foreign origin: He still speaks with an accent.
- Music.
- a stress or emphasis given to certain notes.
- a mark noting this.
- stress or emphasis regularly recurring as a feature of rhythm.
- Mathematics.
- a symbol used to distinguish similar quantities that differ in value, as in b′, b″, b‴ (called b prime, b second or b double prime, b third or b triple prime, respectively).
- a symbol used to indicate a particular unit of measure, as feet (′) or inches (″), minutes (′) or seconds (″).
- a symbol used to indicate the order of a derivative of a function in calculus, as f′ (called f prime) is the first derivative of a function f.
- words or tones expressive of some emotion.
- words; language; speech: He spoke in accents bold.
- distinctive character or tone: an accent of whining complaint.
- special attention, stress, or emphasis: an accent on accuracy.
- a detail that is emphasized by contrasting with its surroundings: a room decorated in navy blue with two red vases as accents.
- a distinctive but subordinate pattern, motif, color, flavor, or the like: The salad dressing had an accent of garlic.
- to pronounce with prominence (a syllable within a word or a word within a phrase): to accent the first syllable of “into”; to accent the first word of “White House.”
- to mark with a written accent or accents.
- to give emphasis or prominence to; accentuate.
- the characteristic mode of pronunciation of a person or group, esp one that betrays social or geographical origin
- the relative prominence of a spoken or sung syllable, esp with regard to stress or pitch
- a mark (such as ˈ, ˌ, ´ or `) used in writing to indicate the stress or prominence of a syllable. Such a mark may also be used to indicate that a written syllable is to be pronounced, esp when such pronunciation is not usual, as in turnèd
- any of various marks or symbols conventionally used in writing certain languages to indicate the quality of a vowel, or for some other purpose, such as differentiation of homographs
- (in some languages, such as Chinese) any of the tones that have phonemic value in distinguishing one word from another
- rhythmic stress in verse or prose
- music
- stress placed on certain notes in a piece of music, indicated by a symbol printed over the note concerned
- the rhythmic pulse of a piece or passage, usually represented as the stress on the first beat of each bar
- either of two superscript symbols indicating a specific unit, such as feet (′), inches (″), minutes of arc (′), or seconds of arc (″)
- a distinctive characteristic of anything, such as taste, pattern, style, etc
- particular attention or emphasis
- a strongly contrasting detail
- to mark with an accent in writing, speech, music, etc
- to lay particular emphasis or stress on
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- PROPOSE (noun) Definition, Meaning & Examples
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