ACCENT

I. transitive verb see: chant Date: 1530 1. to pronounce with ~ ; stress , to mark with a written or printed ~, to give prominence to ; make more prominent, II. noun Date: 1530 an articulative effort giving prominence to one syllable over adjacent syllables, a distinctive manner of expression: as, an individual's distinctive or characteristic inflection, tone, or choice of words, a way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of the natives or residents of a region, rhythmically significant stress on the syllables of a verse usually at regular intervals, utterance , 5. a mark (as ˊ, ˋ, ˆ) used in writing or printing to indicate a specific sound value, stress, or pitch, to distinguish words otherwise identically spelled, or to indicate that an ordinarily mute vowel should be pronounced, an ~ed letter, 6. greater stress given to one musical tone than to its neighbors, ~ mark 2, 7. emphasis laid on a part of an artistic design or composition, an emphasized detail or area, a substance or object used for emphasis, a mark placed to the right of a letter or number and usually slightly above it: as, a double prime, prime , special concern or attention ; emphasis , ~less adjective