This week’s theme
Autological words

This week’s words
verbify
proparoxytone
abstruse
grandiloquent
sesquipedalianism

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(pro-puh-ROK-si-tohn)

MEANING:

adjective: Having stress on the third-from-the-last syllable.
noun: Such a word.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek proparoxytonos, from pro (before) + para (beside) + oxys (acute) + tonos (tone). Earliest documented use: 1764.

NOTES:

Here’s the sequence of words in this family:
oxytone: the ultimate syllable stressed
paroxytone: the penultimate syllable stressed
proparoxytone: antepenultimate syllable stressed

USAGE:

“One has merely to hear a word like ‘anthropos’ to say to oneself, ‘Aha, proparoxytone,’ and place the acute on the antepenult.”
Alfred Andersch (Translator: Leila Vennewitz); The Father of a Murderer; New Directions; 1994.

See more usage examples of proparoxytone in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: