Circumflect

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To bend or curve something so that it encloses or surrounds on all sides
2. To cause to take a curved or rounded shape that wraps around an object or point
3. To form into a circular or rounded shape by bending or folding around something

Etymology: Ancient Greek grammarians had a name for the pitch pattern that the circumflex accent marked: "perispomene," from "peri" ("around") and "spaein" ("to draw"), meaning "drawn around." A vowel so marked was pronounced with a rise and fall in pitch, a bend in the voice that the Romans later rendered in Latin as "circumflexus," the past participle of "circumflectere," "to bend around." The English word "circumflex" comes from that Latin form, and the verb follows the same pattern: "circum-" ("around") plus "flectere" ("to bend"). The verb itself is rare. It describes the act of bending something so it wraps around an object or point, and it shares its ancestry with words like "flexible" and "inflect." Its exact date of entry into English is uncertain to me, though it appears in English writing from the early modern period. Most of its use is in technical or learned contexts, where the accent's shape, a little arc, still gives the root sense of a curve drawn around something.