paroxytone

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Paroxytone (Greek: παροξύτονος, paroxýtonos) is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the syllable before the last syllable, e.g, the English word canasta. In the Italian language the majority of the words are like this.

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

Related terms are proparoxytone (stress on the last one but two) and oxytone (accented on the last one).

See also

• Barytone (syllable)
• Oxytone
• Penult
• Perispomenon
• Preantepenult
• Proparoxytone
• Properispomenon
• Ultima (syllable)
• Stress (linguistics)

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