Word.ws English Dictionary

stress-timed

stress-timed adjective: of a language, such that syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time between consecutive stressed syllables.

Adjective

stress-timed (not comparable)

  1. Of a language, such that syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time between consecutive stressed syllables.
    • As described in the discussion of stress and rhythm at the word level, stress-timed languages are those in which stressed syllables tend to occur at approximately equal intervals.2002, Dorothy M. Chun, Discourse Intonation in L2: From Theory and Research to Practice, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 170

Words formed from stress-timed

Questions about stress-timed

What does stress-timed mean?
Stress-timed means of a language, such that syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time between consecutive stressed syllables.
What part of speech is stress-timed?
Stress-timed is an adjective.

Words near stress-timed in the dictionary

  1. stress timing
  2. stress wood
  3. stress-accent
  4. stress-accents
  5. stress-free
  6. stress-timed
  7. stress-wise
  8. stressability
  9. stressable
  10. stressaholic
  11. stressaholics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stress-timed (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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