ictus

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Medicine A sudden attack, blow, stroke, or seizure.
2. n. The accent that falls on a stressed syllable in a line of scanned verse.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A stroke: as, ictus solis, sunstroke.
2. n. In prosody and music, rhythmical or metrical stress; additional intensity of utterance or delivery distinguishing one time or syllable in a foot or series from the others. Metrical ictus in poetry is analogous to syllabic stress or accent in ordinary speech. In modern or accentual poetry an ictus regularly coincides with the syllabic stress or accent, primary or secondary. In classical or quantitative poetry the ictus was also a stress-accent, but was independent of the syllabic accent, which was a difference in tone or pitch. It regularly attached itself to a long time or syllable as contrasted with one or more shorts, but a long or longs could be metrically unaccented. The conflict between ictus and accent in ancient poetry may be exemplified by the line
3. n. in which the accent is marked and the syllables bearing the ictus are italicized. The part of a foot on which the ictus falls is called the thesis (but see arsis). In a dipody one ictus is stronger than the other. In a colon the ictus of one measure dominates all others. A subordinate ictus can also accompany the principal ictus within the same foot.

Wiktionary

1. n. the pulse
2. n. medicine A sudden attack, blow, stroke, or seizure, as in a sunstroke, the sting of an insect, pulsation of an artery, etc.
3. n. The stress of voice laid upon an accented syllable of a word. Compare arsis.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Pros.) The stress of voice laid upon accented syllable of a word. Cf. arsis.
2. n. (Med.) A stroke or blow, as in a sunstroke, the sting of an insect, pulsation of an artery, etc.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a sudden occurrence (or recurrence) of a disease