accentnoun [ C ]
uk/ˈæk.sənt/us/ˈæk.sənt/accent noun [ C ] (PRONUNCIATION)
B1 the way in which people in a particular area, country, or social group pronounce words:
More examples
- At university he affected an upper-class accent.
- He took elocution lessons to try to make his accent sound more genteel.
- A woman with a very posh accent phoned for him earlier.
- Many celebrities develop a working class accent to increase their street-credibility.
- She speaks English without the slightest trace of an accent.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Ways of speaking
- accentuate
- aitch
- asperity
- BBC English
- breathe
- cut glass
- get your tongue around/round sth idiom
- intone
- lenis
- modulate
- monotone
- plummy
- pragmatics
- singsong
- soft-spoken
- sotto voce
- speech therapy
- spoken
- stumble
- trip off the tongue idiom
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accent noun [ C ] (MARK)
B2 a mark written or printed over a letter to show you how to pronounce it:
More examples
- There's an acute accent on the e in blé, which is the French word for corn.
- Pay attention to the accents on the words, because they show you how to pronounce them.
- Françoise is spelled with an accent - a cedilla - on the 'c'.
- There is an accent called an umlaut in the German word 'Gebaüde', which means 'building'.
- They use quite a lot of accents in Turkish writing, don't they?
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Punctuation
- ampersand
- asterisk
- capitalize
- caron
- cedilla
- dash
- ditto
- grave (accent)
- guillemet
- hyphen
- hyphenate
- lower case
- parentheses
- period
- punctuation
- punctuation mark
- question mark
- quotation marks
- tilde
- upper case
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accent noun [ C ] (EMPHASIS)
specialized language, music a special emphasis given to a particular syllable in a word, word in a sentence, or note in a set of musical notes:
great importance is given to a particular thing or quality:
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Ways of speaking
- accentuate
- aitch
- asperity
- BBC English
- breathe
- cut glass
- get your tongue around/round sth idiom
- intone
- lenis
- modulate
- monotone
- plummy
- pragmatics
- singsong
- soft-spoken
- sotto voce
- speech therapy
- spoken
- stumble
- trip off the tongue idiom
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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:
accentverb [ T ]
uk/əkˈsent/us/ˈæk.sent/to emphasize something:
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Stressing & emphasizing
- accentuate
- drive
- emphasis
- emphasize
- emphatic
- freaking
- fronting
- gloss
- hammer
- hammer sth home idiom
- howling
- impress sth on/upon sb
- place
- play
- play sth up
- point
- point sth out
- point sth up
- should
- underline
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