Emphasise

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To give special importance or attention to something ; to indicate stress or prominence in writing or printing
2. To highlight or underline a particular point to show its significance ; to use typographic features to make a word or phrase stand out
3. To stress or accentuate an idea for clarity or effect ; to signal emphasis on text through formatting or symbols

Etymology: The verb "emphasise" is built from the noun "emphasis" plus the suffix "-ise", and the suffix carries a longer journey than the noun does. Its ancestry runs back to a Proto-Indo-European root, through ancient Greek, where the ending "-ĭ́zō" turned nouns and adjectives into verbs meaning "to do, make or become something." The Greek ending passed into Late Latin as "-izō", then into Old French as "-iser", and reached Middle English as "-isen". Over the centuries it stayed productive, letting English speakers attach it to almost any noun. The noun "emphasis" itself came from Greek "emphasis", meaning "indication" or "exhibition," built from "en-" ("in") and "phainein" ("to show"). So the core idea of the verb is still to show something inside, or to make it visible. English "emphasise" takes that sense of making a point stand out and applies it to speech and argument.

Synonyms: stress, highlight, underscore, accentuate, reinforce

Antonyms: downplay, minimize, ignore, neglect, overlook