diacritical

adj, noun — 3 senses

diacritical

adj

Etymology From diacritic + -al.

1

Capable of distinguishing or of making a distinction.

2

Of, pertaining to, or serving as a diacritic.

  • The reduplicated forms and the fineness of the diacritical strokes, render his book troublesome to the reader1869, Alexander John Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation:
  • California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025:
Derived terms
diacritical hook, diacritically, diacritical mark

diacritical

noun

Etymology From diacritic + -al.

1

Synonym of diacritical mark (adnoun equivalent).

  • This is often the case when diacriticals are written at the end of the word - the last character ends, but there is still some ink in the original writing order that should have been used up in the course of processing the various t's, i's, and apostrophes in the body of the word.1999, Lee Seong-whan, Advances In Handwriting Recognition, page 54:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.