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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Accentuation

Accentuation \Ac*cen`tu*a"tion\, n. [LL. accentuatio: cf. F. accentuation.] Act of accentuating; applications of accent. Specifically (Eccles. Mus.), pitch or modulation of the voice in reciting portions of the liturgy.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
accentuation

1690s, from Medieval Latin accentuationem (nominative accentuatio) "intoning, chanting," noun of action from past participle stem of accentuare (see accentuate).

Wiktionary
accentuation

n. 1 Act of accentuating; applications of accent. 2 (context ecclesiastical music English) pitch or modulation of the voice in reciting portions of the liturgy.

WordNet
accentuation
  1. n. the use or application of an accent; the relative prominence of syllables in a phrase or utterance

  2. the act of giving special importance or significance to something [syn: emphasizing, accenting]

Usage examples of "accentuation".

There was an absence from this section both of the modern philological and archeological spirit, and the report reads more like that of a congress of University tutors of the last century met to discuss the reading of a passage in a Greek play, or the accentuation of a vowel, before the dawn of Comparative Philology had swept away the cobwebs of the Scholiasts.

English, which, while successful as to grammar and accentuation, did not escape the ludicrous in a certain stiltedness of tone and inflection, from which intrusion of the would-be gentleman, his father, a simple, old-fashioned man, shrank with more of dislike than he was willing to be conscious of.

Three cablelike tentacles writhed in a complex gesture of accentuation.

I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the 'my dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of this strange exhibition.