What is "proparoxytone"

Proparoxytone \Pro`par*ox"y*tone\, n. [Gr. ?. See Pro-, and Paroxytone.] (Gr. Gram.) A word which has the acute accent on the antepenult.

a. pertaining to a word in any language, originally in ancient Greek, with the stress (or an acute accent) on the antepenultimate syllable. n. a proparoxytone word

n. word having stress or acute accent on the antepenult

Proparoxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate (third last) syllable such as the English words "cinema" and "operational". Related terms are paroxytone (stress on the last but one) and oxytone (accented on the last one).

In English, most nouns of three or more syllables are proparoxytones. This tendency is so strong in English that it frequently leads to the stress moving to a different part of the root in order to preserve an antepenultimate stress. For example, the root photograph gives rise to the nouns photography and photographer.

In medieval Latin lyric poetry, a proparoxytonic line or half-line is one where the antepenultimate syllable is stressed, as in the first half of the verse "Estuans intrinsecus || ira vehementi."