◌́

Letter

1. (diacritic) Used on loan words to mark e's (mostly final) that are pronounced rather than silent, e.g. animé, café, exposé, maté, resumé, paté, saké; Malé, Pokémon. (Cf. expose, mate, resume, pate, sake, male.)
2. (diacritic) Used in glossaries, such as for Latinate technical terms or Classical names, to mark stressed syllables when full pronunciations are not given, as the pronunciation is largely predictable once stress-placement is known.
3. (diacritic, rare) Used to show an unexpectedly stressed syllable, or where the choice of stress is metrically important, e.g. idiosyncratic caléndar; noun rébel as opposed to verb rebél; áll trádes as a spondee rather than iamb.
4. (diacritic, obsolete) Used in the digraph ⟨ée⟩.
   • And in his wound the seared blood did make a gréeuous sound,
     As when a peece of stéele red who tane vp with tongs is drownd
     In water by the smith, it spirts and hisseth in the trowgh.1567, Ovid, “The Twelfth Booke”, in Arthur Golding, transl., The XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, Entytuled Metamorphosis, […], London: […] Willyam Seres […], →OCLC, folio 152, recto
   • Our hony alſo is taken and reputed to be the beſt bycauſe it is harder, better wrought & clenlyer veſſelled vp, thẽ that which cõmeth from beyond the ſea, where they ſtampe and ſtraine their combes, Bées, & young Blowinges altogither into the ſtuffe, as I haue béene informed.1577, William Harrison, The Description of England in Holinshed’s Chronicles, Volume 1, Book 3, Chapter 12 “Of venemous beastes &c.,”
5. (diacritic) Retained in foreign loan words (mostly French é), particularly when unassimilated
   • (non-final) ancien régime, coup d'état, décor, déjà vu, détente, élite, résumé, séance.
   • (final) attaché, blasé, canapé, cliché, communiqué, entrée, mêlée, fiancé, fiancée, papier-mâché, passé, pâté, plié, résumé, risqué, naïveté, toupée, touché, as well as café, exposé above.