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say it: uh-KYOOT
acute is an adjective and noun meaning "having or experiencing a rapid onset and short but severe course". It carries 7 recorded senses.
extremely sharp or severe
“acute pain”
“felt acute annoyance”
“intense itching and burning”
having or demonstrating ability to recognize or draw fine distinctions
“an acute observer of politics and politicians”
“incisive comments”
“icy knifelike reasoning”
“as sharp and incisive as the stroke of a fang”
“penetrating insight”
“frequent penetrative observations”
of an angle; less than 90 degrees
ending in a sharp point
of critical importance and consequence
“an acute (or critical) lack of research funds”
a mark placed above a vowel to indicate pronunciation
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 acute 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.