1.noun
A distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class.
- 'she never mastered the French accent'
- 'When actors baulked at speaking lines in a foreign language - or their accents were execrable - native-speakers were brought in to play the parts.'
- 'However, differences in dialect consist primarily of slight differences in accent or pronunciation and minor grammatical usages.'
- 'Mass-media broadcasters spoke in the accents of the upper classes.'
- 'Yet, although we share the same language, English accents still confuse the locals.'
- 'I detected a strong British accent in her voice.'
- 'The annual meeting of China's legislature is a jamboree of regional accents and languages.'
- 'It is odd, yet moving, to hear Lechner singing the English translations of German texts with a thick German accent.'
- '‘Some people with working class or regional accents are not getting the chances they deserve and that is a waste,’ she says.'
- 'The moment he started speaking in that melodious voice with its slightly lilting accent and almost perfect enunciation she was lost in its music.'
- 'The very sound of her voice, with that lovely lilting accent, warmed him.'
- 'After reading, judges check on their pronunciation, accent, posture and eye contact.'
- 'It is believed he was British but the suspect spoke in a Patois accent, the accent of Caribbean street language.'
- 'All TV announcers had unbelievable upper class accents.'
- 'The conversation veered towards language and accents.'
- 'The incident highlighted a typically British obsession with accent and social class and reminded Scots that in some circles their more robust accents are considered a sign of aggression.'
- 'With some exceptions, strong regional or Spanish accents are associated with working-class status.'
- 'Most pirates of British origin would thus have had this distinctive accent.'
- 'The whole country was a mixture of different languages and accents back then, especially in the rural areas.'
- 'His lilting Anglo-Indian accent had the cadences of a lyre.'
- 'But I don't care that he's really got an upper class accent.'
A distinct emphasis given to a syllable or word in speech by stress or pitch.
- 'TO-mah-to, they called them in Calcutta, with the accent on the first syllable, making no distinction between singular or plural.'
- 'Mania, they were told, is simply the Italian translation of the word obsession, and anyway it's pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.'
- 'These aren't imported words with genuine umlauts, but retrospective accents denoting a junked hyphen as in microorganisms or coordinated.'
- 'Furthermore, the narrator speaks with the words, accents, and intonations of Golyadkin himself.'
- 'Also, the accent should be on the second syllable: a-SAH-a-na.'
- 'I don't think I grasped much of the concept of where to place accents in the Spanish language, but oh well.'
- 'Elegant accent marks can make any typical product name sound like a shimmering diamond mined from the fertile bowls of the finest dragon filled cave.'
- 'Little accents, little umlauts, tiny apostrophes like snowflakes sting her cheeks.'
- 'It's a neat trick to have a way to spell words containing both nasalization and crucially important tone without any accents or funny letters.'
- 'After all, people who write in these languages on a computer want to use the correct accent marks.'
- 'Modern Greek also retains from the ancient language a system of three pitch accents (acute, circumflex, grave).'
- 'Moravec takes the opening of the first in a way that connects with Bartók's piano dances, with shifting accents.'
- 'Riemann published editions of standard keyboard works in which agogic accents were marked with the sign ^.'
- 'Rachmaninoff indicates that the tenor carries the melody by placing accents over each of its notes.'
- 'The composer's intentions may be notated as dots, dashes, accents, and slurs.'
- 'The rich tone and strong accents of Gabriel Beavers's solo bassoon were striking.'
- 'Some of these have involved minutely detailed descriptions of snare drum accents and eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie rhythms.'
- 'Syncopated staccato accents gradually drop into place on top of an extended droning chord.'
- 'The displacement of the normal musical accent from a strong beat to a weak one.'
- 'The use of unpredictable accents also can add to the rhythmic complexity of a musical work.'
- 'By contrast, the three-beat group is subdivided as a hemiola with accents falling on beat 1 and the second half of beat 2.'
A special or particular emphasis.
- 'The accent is on winning and making money, not developing New Zealand talent.'
- 'The accent is on creating a simulated environment for the customer to feel at home.'
- 'Computer dealers are finding that even machines that were considered ‘high end’ are being snapped up for use at home with the accent on value for money.'
- 'The accent is on natural materials - wood and stone.'
- 'Small schools have sprung up all over the country, laying accent on the quality of the relationship between teacher and student.'
- 'Though there are sections on Welsh and Greek, the accent is on French, German, Spanish and Italian, each of which has a 24-lesson course attached.'
- 'Again, this was simple food with the accent upon quality ingredients and a desire to avoid over-elaboration.'
- 'The accent of the speech however, fell on the steps being taken by the government to reverse these social ills.'
- 'The accent therefore had to fall on external action by the state, but of itself this did not require immediate and exact foreign policy choices.'
- 'The accent is on comfort rather than sportiness and its no coincidence that it looks like an S-Class that shrunk in the wash.'
- 'blue woodwork and accents of red'
- 'Bright red is a bold accent in clusters of anemones and candy canes.'
- 'A few plum accents can bring in a note of elegance to any room; try a throw pillow or two, or a plum lampshade with a fringe?'
- 'She refused to meet his gaze, eyes resting instead on the gold accent of his navy blue coat, or the thick leather belt still decorating his broad chest.'
- 'In the typical mix of femininity and sporty styling, such accents emphasize a modern femininity.'
verb
Emphasize (a particular feature)
- 'The different vibrant and funky colours and ‘intelligent’ lighting perfectly accent the curtain wall and a high ceiling.'
- 'Dark hair and even darker eyes accented his pale features and an amused smile touched his thin lips.'
- 'You can accent a room's feature - such as a pipe or post - by painting it a different color from the rest of the room or de-emphasize it by painting it the same color.'
- 'We all look to you to accent the positives and help us to eradicate the more negative events, and mostly you do achieve this.'
- 'The mystique surrounding Cirque du Soleil is accented by the wonderment the show evokes from the audience.'
- 'So my thought was to replace the flower over-abundance with a solid blue color to accent the nice yellow, by whatever means was the easiest and best way to accomplish this task.'
- 'A tent sized mu-mu - hot orange and pink, accenting the contours of her big, round belly.'
- 'Make art the focal point of your living room by accenting it with halogen spotlights.'
- 'In consequence they strove to accent the competitive element and eliminate any attempt at showboating at every opportunity.'
- 'His angular features were accented by a short bristly goatee, and a single black curl fell on his forehead.'
- 'the quick tempo means there is less scope for accenting offbeat notes'
- 'Ungerleider's sparse guitar style was accented with long bass solos.'
- 'She accented every note just-short of perfectly, fading her voice before a few high notes and before an emphasized verse to add to the atmosphere of the song.'
- 'Axis and Alignment is a jazz tapestry accented by intricate minimalist patterns and incredibly fluid changes, a perpetually shifting sonic picture of gentle enlightenment.'
- 'The Latin rhythms of ‘Canzonetta Spangnuola’ were accented with flair and joy.'
- '‘Golden Twig’ finds the group sliding easily into a lazily bouncy groove, with twangy guitars accenting a steady up-and-down lilt.'
- 'The strings are used only to accent the melody, and any misgivings are quickly redeemed by yet another amazing guitar solo.'
((n.) A superior force of voice or of articulative effort upon
some particular syllable of a word or a phrase, distinguishing it from
the others.|--|(n.) A mark or character used in writing, and serving to
regulate the pronunciation; esp.: (a) a mark to indicate the nature and
place of the spoken accent; (b) a mark to indicate the quality of sound
of the vowel marked; as, the French accents.|--|(n.) Modulation of the voice in speaking; manner of speaking or
pronouncing; peculiar or characteristic modification of the voice;
tone; as, a foreign accent; a French or a German accent.|--|(n.) A word; a significant tone|--|(n.) expressions in general; speech.|--|(n.) Stress laid on certain syllables of a verse.|--|(n.) A regularly recurring stress upon the tone to mark the
beginning, and, more feebly, the third part of the measure.|--|(n.) A special emphasis of a tone, even in the weaker part of
the measure.|--|(n.) The rhythmical accent, which marks phrases and sections of
a period.|--|(n.) The expressive emphasis and shading of a passage.|--|(n.) A mark placed at the right hand of a letter, and a little
above it, to distinguish magnitudes of a similar kind expressed by the
same letter, but differing in value, as y', y''.|--|(n.) A mark at the right hand of a number, indicating minutes of
a degree, seconds, etc.; as, 12'27'', i. e., twelve minutes twenty
seven seconds.|--|(n.) A mark used to denote feet and inches; as, 6' 10'' is six
feet ten inches.|--|)
noun
1.
prominence of a syllable in terms of differential loudness, or of pitch, or length, or of a combination of these.
2.
degree of prominence of a syllable within a word and sometimes of a word within a phrase: primary accent; secondary accent.
3.
a mark indicating stress (as (·, ·), or (ˈ, ˌ), or (′, ″)), vowel quality (as French grave `,acute ´,circumflex ^, ), form (as French la “the” versus là “there”), or pitch.
4.
any similar mark.
5.
Prosody.
regularly recurring stress.
a mark indicating stress or some other distinction in pronunciation or value.
6.
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.Compare tone (def 7).
7.
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.
8.
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.
Compare tone (def 5).
9.
such a mode of pronunciation recognized as being of foreign origin: He still speaks with an accent.
10.
Music.
a stress or emphasis given to certain notes.
a mark noting this.
stress or emphasis regularly recurring as a feature of rhythm.
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1.
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.
1
2.
words or tones expressive of some emotion.
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3.
accents, words; language; speech: He spoke in accents bold.
1
4.
distinctive character or tone: an accent of whining complaint.
1
5.
special attention, stress, or emphasis: an accent on accuracy.
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6.
a detail that is emphasized by contrasting with its surroundings: a room decorated in navy blue with two red vases as accents.
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7.
a distinctive but subordinate pattern, motif, color, flavor, or the like: The salad dressing had an accent of garlic.
verb (used with object)
1
8.
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.”.Compare stress (def 12).
1
9.
to mark with a written accent or accents.
20.
to give emphasis or prominence to; accentuate.