Stress

Stress or Accent, in language, special stress emphasis or relative force or loudness given to one syllable of a word, thereby making that syllable more prominent than the others. The strongest accent is called primary stress; the next most prominent is called secondary stress. In some languages tertiary and weaker stresses are also recognized. In many dictionaries the accents are indicated by such symbols as ^| for primary or main stress and _| for secondary stress. English is a stress language, that is, stress is sometimes used to distinguish meaning (in contrast to tonal languages, for example Mandarin Chinese, which use pitch to differentiate meaning). Almost every English word of two or more syllables has at least one stressed syllable. Frequently the primary stress is placed on an early syllable of a word, as in ^|downpour and ^|drumhead, sometimes it falls on the last, as in _|reco^|mmend and _|resto^|ration. By changing the accent, many nouns may be made verbs, as an ^|object but to ob^|ject. Stress accent is more complex in the English language than in many other languages. The metres of English poetry are determined entirely by accent, rather than by the quantities of vowels. See Versification.