Accent Definition | What is Accent? - PoetrySoup

[n] distinctive manner of oral expression; "he couldn't suppress his contemptuous accent"; "she had a very clear speech pattern"
[n] a diacritical mark used to indicate stress or (in some languages) placed above a vowel to indicate a special pronunciation
[n] the relative prominence of a syllable or musical note (especially with regard to stress or pitch); "he put the stress on the wrong syllable"
[n] 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"
[n] special importance or significance; "the red light gave the central figure increased emphasis"; "the room was decorated in shades of gray with distinctive red accents"
[v] put stress on; utter with an accent; "In Farsi, you accent the last syllable of each word"
[v] to stress, single out as important; "Dr. Jones emphasizes exercise in addition to a change in diet."

The stressed portion of a word. This can change the feeling of the poetry.

Example

N/A

Synonyms

accent mark, accentuate, dialect, emphasis, emphasis, emphasise, emphasize, idiom, punctuate, speech pattern, stress, stress

See Also...

accentuation, acute, acute accent, ague, articulate, background, bear down, bring out, diacritic, diacritical mark, downplay, drawl, drive home, enounce, enunciate, evince, express, focus, grandness, grave, grave accent, importance, inflection, non-standard speech, patois, pitch accent, play down, point up, press home, pronounce, pronunciation, prosody, ram home, re-emphasise, re-emphasize, say, sentence stress, set off, show, sound out, stress, stress mark, tonic accent, underline, underscore, word accent, word stress

Related Terms

accent mark, accents, accentuate, accentuation, Alexandrine, amphibrach, amphimacer, anacrusis, anapest, antispast, arsis, articulation, bacchius, bar, beat, belabor, broad accent, brogue, burr, cadence, caesura, cancel, catalexis, character, chatter, chl

Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line or stanza regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed such as English as opposed to syllabic verse, which is common in syllable-timed languages such as classical Latin. Nursery Rhymes are the most common form of Accentual verse in the English Language.

Example

The following poem, Baa Baa Black Sheep, has two stresses in each line, but a varying number of syllables.
(Bold represents stressed syllables, and the number of syllables in each line is noted)

Baa, baa, black sheep, (4)

Have you any wool? (5)

Yes sir, yes sir, (4)

Three bags full; (3)

One for the mas-ter, (5)

And one for the dame, (5)

And one for the lit-tle boy (7)

Who lives down the lane. (5)

See distributed stress.

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Occurs where lines end with feminine (front-stressed) words and the unaccented final syllables would rhyme (if accented) but the initial syllables don't e.g. 'lover' and 'matter' or 'slowly' and 'clearly'.

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Occurs when the metrical stress or accent forces a change in the natural word accent. This can occur due to a poet's lack of skill, but is also characteristic of folk ballads.

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