Paroxytone

In linguistics, a paroxytone (Greek: παροξύτονος, paroxýtonos) is a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the second-to-last syllable,^[1]: 121 such as the English word potáto.

In English, most words ending in -ic are paroxytones: músic, frántic, and phonétic but not rhétoric, aríthmetic (noun), and Árabic.

In Italian and Portuguese as well as Spanish, most words are paroxytones. In Polish, almost all multisyllabic words are paroxytones except for certain verb conjugations and a few words of foreign origin.

In medieval Latin lyric poetry, a paroxytonic line or half-line is one in which the penultimate syllable is stressed, as in the second half of the verse "Estuans intrinsecus || ira vehementi."

Related concepts are proparoxytone (stress on the antepenultimate or third-to-last syllable) and oxytone (stress on the ultimate or last syllable).

See also

• Barytone
• Oxytone
• Penult
• Perispomenon
• Proparoxytone
• Properispomenon
• Stress (linguistics)