inverted circumflex
inverted circumflex noun: a dipping tone.
Noun
inverted circumflex (plural inverted circumflexes)
- A dipping tone.
- The inflection, which begins upward and ends downward on the same syllable, called the circumflexed slide, is exemplified by the proper utterance of the word they in the succeeding instance:
Not he, but they are in fault.
And the inflection, which is just the reverse of this, namely, which begins...1810, Benjamin Humphrey Smart, A Practical Grammar of English Pronunciation, page 335 - Mr. Walker does triumphantly claim the discovery of the inverted circumflex accent, or the downward and upward continued movement.
[…]
Greek and Roman writers tell us, indefinitely, of the acute, grave, and circumflex movements; and these, with the newly described inverted circumflex, have, at a...1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice, pages ix and x
- The inflection, which begins upward and ends downward on the same syllable, called the circumflexed slide, is exemplified by the proper utterance of the word they in the succeeding instance:
- Any diacritic obtained by rotating a circumflex (ˆ) 180°.
- This rising inflection will be indicated by an inverted circumflex ( ˇ ) being placed over the last syllable in the clause that bears the primary accent.1844, An Introduction to the Art of Reading, page 107
- A háček.
- In this way c surmounted by an inverted circumflex accent stands for our sound of ch, which in Russian, Polish, or Servian words, we usually see spelled cz.1876, Appletons’ Journal, XV, page 511
Forms of inverted circumflex
| plural | inverted circumflexes |
|---|
Origin of inverted circumflex
From its earliest attested use as an idiomatic phrase in 1810, inverted circumflex was first used to denote a dipping tone — an inversion of the peaking tone denoted by ⟨῀⟩, the Ancient Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē), commonly translated as “circumflex” — thence the name was applied to diacritics which marked such a dipping tone and, by extension, other tones to which it was suited; finally, due to such a diacritic’s resemblance to the háček, the name came to be applied to it as well.
Questions about inverted circumflex
- What does inverted circumflex mean?
- Inverted circumflex means a dipping tone.
- What part of speech is inverted circumflex?
- Inverted circumflex is a noun.
- What is the plural of inverted circumflex?
- The plural of inverted circumflex is inverted circumflexes.
Words near inverted circumflex in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: inverted circumflex (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “inverted circumflex.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/inverted_circumflex. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.