DIAERESIS

or dieresis noun (plural diaereses) Etymology: Late Latin ~, from Greek diairesis, literally, division, from diairein to divide, from dia- + hairein to take Date: circa 1611 a mark ¨ placed over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable (as in naïve or Brontë ), the break in a verse caused by the coincidence of the end of a foot with the end of a word, diaeretic adjective