Stress

How it is used

Teachers distinguish word stress (PHOtograph, phoTOgraphy) from sentence stress on the important words. Dictionaries mark the main stress with ˈ before the syllable. As a verb: stress the second syllable.

Example sentences

1. The stress moves when you add a suffix: PHOtograph, phoTOgrapher, photoGRAphic.

2. In 'I didn't take your pen', changing the sentence stress changes what you mean.

Common collocations

• word stress
• sentence stress
• primary stress
• stress pattern
• stress-timed language

Related terms

• syllableA unit of pronunciation built around a vowel sound, often with consonants before or after it; 'banana' has three syllables: ba-na-na.
• intonationThe rise and fall of the voice across a phrase or sentence, which shows things like a question, surprise, the speaker's attitude or whether they have finished.
• schwaThe short, weak, central vowel /ə/, the most common vowel sound in English, heard in unstressed syllables such as the first sound of 'about' or the end of 'teacher'.
• phonologyThe study of how a particular language organizes its sounds into a system: which sound differences change meaning, how sounds combine and how they affect each other.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• stress · Mechanical Engineering
• stress · Psychology

More terms: Phonetics and Phonology

• phonetics
• phoneme
• vowel
• consonant
• IPA
• minimal pair
• allophone
• voiced
• place of articulation