stress mark
1
5.8
- noun
- /strɛs mɑrk/
- Specialized
:
marca de acento
- When reading poetry, it's helpful to add stress marks to indicate the rhythm of the lines.
- stress mark indicates
Examples
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Students can diagram sentences and have an amazing understanding of phonetic stress marks.
Academic text (1990) -
In phonetics class, we learned how to use stress marks to show which syllable is emphasized.
-
The teacher explained that each word can have different stress marks to change its meaning in sentences.
Synonyms
5
4.8
A mark above a vowel showing how to pronounce it
A mark placed above or below a letter to show which syllable is strong and how to say it
A small sign written on a letter to show how to say it or to change its meaning
Antonyms
- Specialized
A part of a word not said with strong emphasis, like the second syllable of banana
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'stress' (accentuation) plus 'mark' (a symbol): a symbol indicating which syllable is stressed. This noun-noun combination is a common, cross-linguistic descriptive pattern and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
The term stress mark comes from the idea of a small sign placed above the syllable you say more strongly. The stress is the stronger beat in a word and the mark points to it, so the sign shows which syllable to 'stress' when you speak.