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say it: uhk-SENT
accent is a noun and verb meaning "distinctive manner of oral expression". It carries 7 recorded senses.
distinctive manner of oral expression
“he couldn't suppress his contemptuous accent”
“she had a very clear speech pattern”
special importance or significance
“the red light gave the central figure increased emphasis”
“the room was decorated in shades of grey with distinctive red accents”
the usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific group of people
“the immigrants spoke an odd dialect of English”
“he has a strong German accent”
“it has been said that a language is a dialect with an army and navy”
the relative prominence of a syllable or musical note (especially with regard to stress or pitch)
“he put the stress on the wrong syllable”
a diacritical mark used to indicate stress or placed above a vowel to indicate a special pronunciation
language
to stress, single out as important
“Dr. Jones emphasizes exercise in addition to a change in diet”
put stress on; utter with an accent
“In Farsi, you accent the last syllable of each word”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for accent come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.