Oxytone

An oxytone (from Greek ὀξύτονος, meaning "sharply pitched") is a word in which the acute accent (or, more broadly, the stress) falls on the final syllable. In quantitative verse, this often translates to a syllable of long duration. In languages with stress accent, it simply signifies that the last syllable receives the primary stress. The term is most commonly used in the context of Ancient Greek and Latin, where accent was a significant feature of pronunciation and word classification.

In Ancient Greek, oxytone words are the most common type of word. When not followed by any other words in a sentence, the acute accent on the final syllable of an oxytone becomes a grave accent. This phenomenon is known as barytonesis. However, if the oxytone is followed by an enclitic, the acute accent remains.

In Latin, the accentuation rules generally dictate that the stress falls on the penultimate syllable if it is long, and on the antepenultimate syllable if the penultimate is short. Words with only two syllables are always stressed on the first syllable. Therefore, true oxytones are rare in Latin as stress is generally determined by the syllable structure rather than being inherent to the word itself in the way that Greek stress often is. However, certain clitic forms and some compound words can exhibit oxytone stress in Latin.

The concept of the oxytone is crucial for understanding the rhythm and meter of classical poetry in both Greek and Latin, as well as the nuances of pronunciation. Understanding the stress pattern is also important for understanding the evolution of these languages into Romance languages, where stress patterns often shifted, leading to changes in vowel sounds and overall pronunciation.