Related Words

Diacritic: An accent or change to a normal alphabetical letter to differentiate its pronunciation.

Secondary Stress: A stress less prominent than the primary stress--often indicated by a grave accent mark. See chart of common diacritical markings for more information.

Tilde: A diacritic marking usd in languages like Spanish and Portugeuse. It looks like this: ~, and the tilde appears over another letter.

Wedge: Primarily refers to an elongated area of shallow high pressure at the earth's surface. It is generally associated with cold air east of the Rockies or Appalachians. It is another name for a . . . View Full Definition

Macron: A diacritical mark in the form of a horizontal line indicating the vowel beneath it is long.

Umlaut: (1) Jacob Grimm's term for the process of assimilating a vowel to another sound in the following syllable. This process is also called mutation. This process is responsible for many unusual . . . View Full Definition

Ictus: The stress.

Acute Accent: A diacritical mark indicating primary stress.

Cedilla: A diacritical mark used in several languages, such as the ç in French.

Dieresis: (also called an umlaut) A diacritic mark (¨) to show that vowels represent sounds of different quality--Algeo provides German Brüder (brothers') and Bruder (brother') as an example (316). . . . View Full Definition