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Stress refers to which syllable or syllables in a word or phrase are "accented" or receive the most emphasis in their pronunciation.

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When one pronounces the phrase a gorgeous young model in a very normal way (without any special stress to emphasize a specific meaning), which word will be said in the highest pitch, which word ...
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Many people told me that the particle is stressed when it comes to Intransitive Phrasal Verb. (like "warm up" in this video https://youtu.be/9I1DBOJERns?t=3) (Text: Winter's over, the weather's ...
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"Pianist" is usually pronounced /ˈpiənɪst/, with /piˈænɪst/ as an acceptable variant only in the US and Canada, according to Wiktionary. I'm not sure why the pronunciation /ˈpiənɪst/ would be more ...
mic's user avatar
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I was taught to stress the first syllable of "television", but some dictionaries stress the syllable before -sion. My other question is "Does stressing VI before -sion exist in AmE?
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For words ending in the -ing suffix, is the suffix stressed? Unstressed? Does adding the -ing suffix affect the stress of the other syllables? Example: (u is untressed, ' is stressed) Deteriorate is (...
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Is there any case when it's correct to pronounce the word police with the stress on the first syllable: /ˈpəlis/?
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I'm struggling to understand the sentence stress in the following sentences: Why don’t we watch a comedy film? I'm pretty sure that 'don't', 'watch', 'comedy', and 'film' are stressed; why is a wh-...
Pehnt's user avatar
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Question: Which syllable or syllables are stressed in the word ohmmeter? Context: I tried to say the word ohmmeter out loud today and realized I am unsure of the correct pronunciation. The double m ...
Jeremy Harris's user avatar
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Studying suffixes I've learned that "-ESE" is a strong suffix, therefore it holds the main stress when it's added to a word (e.g. China -> Chinese; Japan -> Japanese; journal -> journalese; etc.). ...
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If a speaker clearly emphasizes a word or a term, should it be written down in quotation marks? e.g. Everyone's so intimidated by "big data."
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When pronounce word "covet" should I give stress to "o" or to "e"? I searched Emma Saying channel for this word and there are two videos with different pronunciation so I'm not sure if this source is ...
kelin's user avatar
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Petrol and patrol are written very similarly, though completely and obviously different in meaning. My question here is actually about the accent on these words. Why is petrol stressed on PE, and ...
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Usually in a phrase composed of an adjective followed by a noun, the noun gets the most stress, and in a phrasal verb like (go on, sit down, stand up) the preposition gets the most stress. However ...
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I often encounter nouns that I hear of for the first time, and I can not determine which syllable to stress. Unfortunately, I can not find most of these nouns in dictionaries to check the stressed ...
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English isn't my native language, so my question might seem dumb to you, but I wanna be sure. I'm writing some fiction, but I have some problems with syntax... Here's the question at issue : "why is ...
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I can see that the word postman is pronounced as /pəʊs(t)mən/ commonly, where you can’t hear the vowel in the ‑man syllable. But sometimes it is pronounced /pəʊs(t)mæn/ — with a noticeable /æ/ vowel ...
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It is believed that word yougurt has Turkish etymology, and in Turkish phonology stess "is complicated" (you can listen different Turkish native speakers at forvo.com). Why in English yougurt has ...
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In the following sentence, which word should receive the stress: This is the dog’s collar. I fully understand that in different contexts, different words will be stressed. But I’m asking about the ...
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In modern English, polysyllabic verbs ending in -ate are regularly stressed on the third-to-last syllable. (There are some (possible) exceptions, such as incarnate, impregnate, and elongate.) But it ...
herisson's user avatar
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uncovered during an informal English conversational lesson today, according to my (1970s) Concise Oxford Dictionary, the vi and vt forms of 'progress' do have separate entries, different pronunciation,...
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For this word: ○ recommend ○/ˌrekəˈmend/ 1) /rekə/ is the first syllable. Does it contain two vowels? ■ e is a vowel ■ ə is a vowel I thought syllables can only contain one vowel? 2) the [ ']...
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I've been having a real hard time trying to gather information about word formation in English, more specifically about the rules involving suffixes that turn verbs and adjectives into nouns. But not ...
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In English, the name of the famous Queen of the Iceni has been written many ways (there is some discussion in Boudica and Her Stories: Narrative Transformations of a Warrior Queen, by Carolyn D. ...
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I was just watching a show where someone said "awry". I have noted this numerous times before and wondered, but now I just have to understand: Why is it pronounced as "aww-rye" [low tone on the aww] ...
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English is oft said to be stress timed, so that strongly stressed syllables should occur at (roughly) the same intervals. For the purposes of this question, please assume that. Is a syllable ...
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I am curious about which side of the expression is stressed when "as well as" is used as a conjunction. For example: brave as well as loyal In this case, which adjective sounds highlighted more? Or ...
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I note that "carcinogen" might also be stressed on its preantepenult, in which case the question would become why the two words should have their stress so far away from the end when a stress nearer ...
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Whenever I google it the results are mostly about Romance languages. Google itself gives two versions r'omance and rom'ance. Are they used interchangeably for both the noun and the verb or r'omance ...
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This is a question about sentence stress. The example is taken from a unit of Michael Vaughan's "Test your Pronunciation". The Unit is entitled "Predicting highlighting shift in dialogue". Here is ...
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It is said that English has stress-timed rhythm. Is it true? because it sounds that syllables with stress doesn't necessarily get a beat and make isochrony. If it is true, I would like to hear how you ...
Motoki's user avatar
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Can somebody tell me when the sounds 'schwa' and /æ/ are used in the following tongue twister: Can you can a can as a canner can can a can.
welcomeINhell's user avatar
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This has been a question in my mind for quite a long time, and I can't help but wonder are all words with stress in their second part pronounced the same all the time? For example, OK, because, etc. I ...
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I would like to know which word in the questions below is stressed in normal converstion. What is it? What is that? What do you do? Where do you live? How about in other circumstances?
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I've searched this site for questions containing both thirteen and thirty, fourteen and forty, etc. up until I found this question about seventy. Most of the comments seem to be about using "...
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I just found that the word 'me' was used as a possessive in sentences of spoken English, in the movie "Harry Potter": "I'm half and half. Me dads a muggle, mum's a witch." Generally, isn't it proper ...
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I've seen that some words in English are pronounced with the /ɪ/ sound when the vowel is not stressed. Some examples include: pocket /ˈpɒkɪt/, comet /ˈkɒmɪt/. But hundred /ˈhʌndrəd/. Is there any ...
Schwale's user avatar
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Funnily enough, the word orthoepy (or orthoëpy) meaning “(the study of) correct (or standard) pronunciation” has no single established correct pronunciation: it may be stressed on either the first or ...
herisson's user avatar
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Where should I put stress in the sentence below? If only I knew who it was from
Mariana's user avatar
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Since English is a stress-timed language, why have poets chosen to write in iambic pentameter? Doesn't the language already have a natural rhythm without resorting to meter? And isn't that natural ...
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Is the acronym "O.K." generally pronounced as an iamb or a trochee? Or is it context-dependent?
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In his poem Spring and Fall, Gerard Manley Hopkins uses diacritics where one would normally not see them. Does anyone know why? Here is the poem: Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove ...
Juan M's user avatar
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I'm now thinking about the foot in English. This is an unit of rhythm. And I think that the English foot is seen as left-dominant, which is always started with a strong syllable. But I don't know the ...
Motoki's user avatar
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Which of the two common pronunciations of the noun research is more common among educated native American English speakers? /rɪ ˈsɝt͡ʃ/ with the stress on the second syllable /ˈriː sɚt͡ʃ/ with the ...
user376034's user avatar
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I read the definition for epenthesis as the insertion or development of a sound or letter in the body of a word. I am hearing media pronounce the word 'student' with an accent on the second syllable. ...
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I'm just wondering what it is about this construction that makes it sound "incorrect" even though technically it is grammatically correct. Is it an awkwardness arising from a lack of cadence, or ...
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1 vote
1 answer
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I used to think that sojourn was pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable (So-Journ'), and until now that's how I'd heard it, then I heard from some learned people that it's on the first ...
barlop's user avatar
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Can the number and position of non-primary stresses vary depending on the sentence it appears in? E.g. assuming the word catastrophe, in RP, has a stress on the second syllable /kəˈtastrəfi/ Can we ...
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Is there a way of deciding whether the syllable of a word, in RP, can never be stressed in any sentence? E.g. congenital /kənˈdʒɛnɪt(ə)l/ I would assume that '(ə)l' can never be stressed, whatever ...
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I recently stumbled upon an interesting quirk regarding words that are both nouns and verbs. They seem to all follow the same stress pattern. Here are a few examples: NOUNS I have a really long ...
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According to Wikipedia, lexical stress in Standard English* is "phonemic" (whatever they think they mean by that), using the minimal pair insight/incite as an example. My hypothesis is that, across ...
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