Underscoring

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of drawing special attention to an idea or fact by stressing it
2. The process of making something stand out clearly to indicate its importance
3. Giving added importance or prominence to a particular point or detail

Etymology: Underscore began as a physical act: writing a line beneath words, usually to mark them for emphasis or to show that they were a heading. The verb grew from the noun "score," which in Old English and Middle English meant a notch or mark cut into something, and the prefix "under-" places the line below the text it singles out. A writer who drew that line was signalling that the words above it mattered more than their neighbours, and that habit of physical marking gave the word its figurative sense. The same idea carried over from the page to speech and argument. To underscore a point now means to make it stand out so that no one misses its importance, whether a speaker repeats a key phrase or a report highlights a single statistic. The sense stays close to the original: something is set apart by a mark that cannot be overlooked.

Synonyms: emphasizing, highlighting, stressing

Antonyms: downplaying, diminishing, ignoring