Today's Word

Yesterday's Word

Archives

FAQ

Sep 27, 2006

This week's theme
Miscellaneous words

This week's words
prelapsarian
senectitude
diacritical
theriac
prevenient

A.Word.A.Day on your site
Add the daily word to your web page. It is free.

---

diacritical

adjective:
1. Distinctive; capable of distinguishing.
2. Serving as a diacritic (a mark, such as ^ or ~ or other accent marks, added to a letter to distinguish it from a similar letter, for example, to distinguish resume from résumé).

From Greek diakritikos (distinctive), from diakrinein (to distinguish), from dia- (apart) + krinein (to separate). Ultimately from the Indo-European root krei- (to sift or to discriminate) that also gave us crime, crisis, certain, excrement, secret, critic, garble, and hypocrisy.

"In a pertinent, diacritical chapter of this work, Stallabrass surveys the paucity of art criticism in turn-of-the-century Britain."
Will Self; I Danced to a Decadent Drum; New Statesman (London, UK); Jan 31, 2000.

See more usage examples of diacritical in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

X-Bonus