The Collaborative International Dictionary
Diacritic \Di`a*crit"ic\, Diacritical \Di`a*crit"ic*al\, a. [Gr.
?, fr. ? to separate, distinguish; dia` through + ? to
separate. See Critic.]
That separates or distinguishes; -- applied to points or
marks used to distinguish letters of similar form, or
different sounds of the same letter, as, [=a], [a^], ["a],
[=o], [o^], etc. ``Diacritical points.''
--Sir W. Jones.
A glance at this typography will reveal great
difficulties, which diacritical marks necessarily throw
in the way of both printer and writer.
--A. J. Ellis.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Capable of distinguishing or of making a distinction. 2 Of, pertaining to, or serving as a diacritic n. diacritic (mark)
WordNet
adj. capable of distinguishing; "students having superior diacritic powers"; "the diacritic elements in culture"- S.F.Nadel [syn: diacritic]
Usage examples of "diacritical".
Latin and Greek, as primarily written languages: the two tongues use a common set of runes, though diacritical marks and cursive ligatures differ.
Because of limitations in the ASCII character set, and for ease of searching, no diacritical marks appear in this electronic version.
I have transcribed all Chinese names in such a way that they can be easily remembered, omitting the diacritical marks of the Giles system of romanisation, which would only confuse the general reader.
Without asking her permission, he jotted down her description of the Change War and her questions on a tablet using an impacted system of diacritical marks.
Some diacriticals in the text could not be represented in 7-bit ASCII text and have been approximated here.
Italics and diacritical marks such as accents and cedillas are omitted and unmarked.
It was a long story, impossible to unravel, partly because the various Arab authors and protagonists had extremely long names, the texts were transcribed with a forest of diacritical marks, and as the evening wore on we could no longer distinguish between Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn 'AH ibn Razzam al-Ta I al-Kufi, Abu Muhammad 'Ubayd Allah, and Abu Mu'inl 'Abd Din Na-sir ibn Khusraw MarvazI Qubadiyanl.
Graphemes The ancient Arabic script, a naturally cursive script with up to four different forms for each letter (depending on its position-initial, medial, final, or uncon nected-m a word), has, through millennia of usage been streamlined and at times arbitrarily restructured so that it has come to be an alphabetic script with only one form of a letter per sound unit This latest innovation was attributed to the planetologist Liet-Kynes during his stay on Arrakis with the Fremen tribes Other pnor innovations included the introduction of symbols to represent vowels (ancient Arabic script indicated short vowels only by infrequently used diacritical marks) attributed to Ah Ben Ohasi and later modi fied by the Fremen in the fast copies of their desert survival manual, the Kitab al Ibar The Fremen script in use during die time .
Some of these use diacritical marks unfamiliar to most readers, while others generate bizarre spellings that don't suggest any widely spoken dialect of post-biblical Hebrew.
In both cases, there are diacritical marks that can be used in the Hebrew to indicate the intended pronunciation, but these are omitted in most written Hebrew.
It was a long story, impossible to unravel, partly because the various Arab authors and protagonists had extremely long names, the texts were transcribed with a forest of diacritical marks, and as the evening wore on we could no longer distinguish between Abu ‘.
Since the necessary diacritical marks are not available, the spellings are a little on the approximate side.
Without asking her permission, he jotted down her description of the Change War and her questions on a tablet using an impacted system of diacritical marks.
I refer to those scholars of Elvish, as well as one well-known Elvish scholar, who have taken time better employed elsewhere to criticize my decision to dispense with the vast apparatus of diacritical marks with which they attempt to render on paper that most nuanced of languages.
Graphemes The ancient Arabic script, a naturally cursive script with up to four different forms for each letter (depending on its position-initial, medial, final, or uncon nected-m a word), has, through millennia of usage been streamlined and at times arbitrarily restructured so that it has come to be an alphabetic script with only one form of a letter per sound unit This latest innovation was attributed to the planetologist Liet-Kynes during his stay on Arrakis with the Fremen tribes Other pnor innovations included the introduction of symbols to represent vowels (ancient Arabic script indicated short vowels only by infrequently used diacritical marks) attributed to Ah Ben Ohasi and later modi fied by the Fremen in the fast copies of their desert survival manual, the Kitab al Ibar The Fremen script in use during die time of Muad'Dib is shown below Many of the values of .