Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Diacritical.
  • adjective Medicine Diagnostic or distinctive.
  • noun A mark, such as the cedilla of façade or the acute accent of resumé, added to a letter to indicate a special phonetic value or distinguish words that are otherwise graphically identical.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Serving to distinguish: same as diacritical (which is the more common form).
  • noun A diacritical mark (which see, under diacritical).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective That separates or distinguishes; -- applied to points or marks used to distinguish letters of similar form, or different sounds of the same letter, as, ā, ă, ä, ō, ŏ, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective distinguishing
  • adjective orthography, not comparable Denoting a distinguishing mark applied to a letter or character.
  • noun A special mark added to a letter to indicate a different pronunciation, stress, tone, or meaning.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective capable of distinguishing
  • noun a mark added to a letter to indicate a special pronunciation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek diakritikos, distinguishing, from diakritos, distinguished, from diakrīnein, to distinguish : dia-, apart; see dia– + krīnein, to separate; see krei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek διακριτικός (diakritikos, "distinguishing, separative"), from διακρίνειν (diakrinein, "to distinguish, separate"), from διά (dia, "between") + κρίνω (krinō, "I separate, distinguish").

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Examples

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  • bîľbÿ mäďę mé łòõk űp ţhîš wøŕď

    July 16, 2013