diacritic

1. 1.

   a mark added to a letter to indicate a special pronunciation

   Synonymsdiacritical mark

   Broadermark

   Narroweraccentbrevecedillacircumflexhacekmacrontildeumlautdieresis

1. 1.

   capable of distinguishing

   “students having superior diacritic powers”

   “the diacritic elements in culture”

   Synonymsdiacritical

   Similardiscriminating

Other forms of diacritic

plural

diacritics·

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.

Questions about diacritic

What does diacritic mean?

diacritic means "a mark added to a letter to indicate a special pronunciation". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in diacritic?

diacritic has 4 syllables: di-a-crit-ic. The stress falls on "crit". In IPA it is /ˌdaɪəˈkɹɪtək/.

What is another word for diacritic?

Close synonyms include diacritical mark, diacritical. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is diacritic a common word?

diacritic is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.