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Definition 2025
tonos
tonos
English
Noun
tonos (plural tonoi)
- (orthography and typography) The Modern Greek stress-marking diacritic: ⟨ ΄ ⟩, written atop a vowel in a given word’s stressed syllable.
Usage notes
- The tonos is also used to distinguish some homographic monosyllables; for example: η (i), the feminine definite article, and ή (í), the conjunction “or”. In such cases, the tonos does not reflect a difference in stress.
- When combined with the dialytika, the tonos is written between that diacritic’s two dots, as: ⟨ ΅ ⟩.
- As a compromise of forms between the Ancient Greek oxia and baria, the tonos was designed as a vertical bar (similar to ⟨ ˈ ⟩, the IPA primary-stress marker); however, in most cases, it and the oxia both take the form of the Latin-script acute accent: ⟨ ´ ⟩.