Accentuates

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To make a feature or detail more noticeable or prominent
2. To highlight or stress important aspects or characteristics
3. To draw particular attention to something to enhance its effect

Etymology: "Accentuate" is a verb, and it traces back to the Latin word for a tone of voice. Latin "accentus" meant a musical or spoken pitch, a song sung alongside something, and it combined "ad-" (toward) with "cantus" (singing). Ancient Greek grammarians had a term, "prosōidia," for the pitch placed on a syllable, and the Romans translated it as "accentus," so the original image is of a pitch added to a word, a little melody laid on top of the speech. Medieval Latin then formed "accentuare," meaning to put an accent on something, and English borrowed that base in the eighteenth century. The word was first recorded in 1731, which means it came into English as a learned term for stressing a syllable or marking a sound. Its meaning then widened from the pitch of speech to any act of making a feature stand out, which is the sense it carries today.

Synonyms: emphasizes, highlights, stresses, reinforces, underscores

Antonyms: diminishes, downplays, lessens, obscures, de-emphasizes