Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To stress or emphasize; intensify.
  • transitive verb To pronounce with a stress or accent.
  • transitive verb To mark with an accent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To mark or pronounce with an accent or with accents; place an accent or accents on. To lay stress upon; emphasize; give prominence to; mark as of importance: as, he accentuated the views of the party on this question.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To pronounce with an accent or with accents.
  • transitive verb To bring out distinctly; to make prominent; to emphasize.
  • transitive verb To mark with the written accent.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To pronounce with an accent or vocal stress.
  • verb transitive To bring out distinctly; to make prominent; to emphasize.
  • verb transitive To mark with a written accent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb to stress, single out as important
  • verb put stress on; utter with an accent

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Medieval Latin accentuāre, accentuāt-, from Latin accentus, accent; see accent.]

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