Word.ws English Dictionary

oxia

UK/ˈɒksɪə/

oxia noun: an Ancient Greek pitch-marking diacritic: ⟨ ´ ⟩; written atop vowels, it denotes high pitch on short vowels, and rising pitch on long vowels and diphthongs.

Noun

oxia (plural oxiae)

  1. An Ancient Greek pitch-marking diacritic: ⟨ ´ ⟩; written atop vowels, it denotes high pitch on short vowels, and rising pitch on long vowels and diphthongs.

Forms of oxia

pluraloxiae
alternative formoxeia

Origin of oxia

From the Ancient Greek ὀξεῖᾰ (oxeîă), an elliptical use for ἡ ὀξεῖᾰ προσῳδῐ́ᾱ (hē oxeîă prosōidĭ́ā, “the acute accent”) — ἡ (hē, the nominative feminine singular form of ὁ, ho, “the”, the definite article) + ὀξεῖᾰ (okseia, the nominative feminine singular form of ὀξῠ́ς, oksus, “sharp”, of sound “shrill”, of tones “high-pitched”) + προσῳδῐ́ᾱ (prosōdiā, “variation in pitch of the speaking voice”, “pronunciation of a syllable on a certain pitch”, “a mark [i.e., a diacritic] indicating normally unwritten differences of pronunciation, viz. vowel quantity, breathing, and pitch”).

Questions about oxia

What does oxia mean?
Oxia means an Ancient Greek pitch-marking diacritic: ⟨ ´ ⟩; written atop vowels, it denotes high pitch on short vowels, and rising pitch on long vowels and diphthongs.
What part of speech is oxia?
Oxia is a noun.
How do you pronounce oxia?
Oxia is pronounced /ˈɒksɪə/ (UK).
What is the plural of oxia?
The plural of oxia is oxiae.

Words near oxia in the dictionary

  1. oxhinds
  2. oxhorn
  3. oxhorns
  4. oxi
  5. oxi-
  6. oxia
  7. oxiae
  8. oxiapoptophagy
  9. oxibendazole
  10. oxibuprocain
  11. oxibuprocaine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oxia (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: “oxia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oxia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.