What is "paroxytone"

Paroxytone \Par*ox"y*tone\, n. [Gr. ?, a. See Para-, and Oxytone.] (Gr. Gram.) A word having an acute accent on the penultimate syllable.

a. (context of a word, especially an Ancient Greek word English) Having the stress or accent on the penultimate syllable. n. A paroxytone word.

n. word having stress or acute accent on the next to last syllable

Paroxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the second last syllable, such as the English word potato. In Italian and Portuguese, most words are like that. In Polish, almost all words have paroxytonic stress, except for certain verb conjugations and a few words of foreign origin.

In medieval Latin lyric poetry, a paroxytonic line or half-line is one in which the penultimate syllable is stressed, as in the second half of the verse "Estuans intrinsecus || ira vehementi."

Related terms are proparoxytone (stress on the third last syllable) and oxytone (accented on the last syllable).