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Noun: accent  'ak,sent
  1. Distinctive manner of oral expression
    "he couldn't suppress his contemptuous accent";
    - speech pattern
  2. Special importance or significance
    "the room was decorated in shades of grey with distinctive red accents";
    - emphasis
  3. The usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific group of people
    "he has a strong German accent";
    - dialect, idiom
  4. The relative prominence of a syllable or musical note (especially with regard to stress or pitch)
    "he put the accent on the wrong syllable";
    - stress, emphasis
  5. (language) a diacritical mark used to indicate stress or placed above a vowel to indicate a special pronunciation
    - accent mark
Verb: accent  'ak,sent
    - stress, emphasize, emphasise [Brit], punctuate, accentuate
  2. Put stress on; utter with an accent
    "In Farsi, you accent the last syllable of each word";
    - stress, accentuate

Derived forms: accented, accents, accenting

Type of: articulate, diacritic, diacritical mark, enounce, enunciate, evince, express, grandness, importance, inflection, non-standard speech, pronounce, pronunciation, prosody, say, show, sound out

Encyclopedia: Accent