What's the difference between accent and diction?

Accent


Definition:

  • (n.) A superior force of voice or of articulative effort upon some particular syllable of a word or a phrase, distinguishing it from the others.
  • (n.) A mark or character used in writing, and serving to regulate the pronunciation; esp.: (a) a mark to indicate the nature and place of the spoken accent; (b) a mark to indicate the quality of sound of the vowel marked; as, the French accents.
  • (n.) Modulation of the voice in speaking; manner of speaking or pronouncing; peculiar or characteristic modification of the voice; tone; as, a foreign accent; a French or a German accent.
  • (n.) A word; a significant tone
  • (n.) expressions in general; speech.
  • (n.) Stress laid on certain syllables of a verse.
  • (n.) A regularly recurring stress upon the tone to mark the beginning, and, more feebly, the third part of the measure.
  • (n.) A special emphasis of a tone, even in the weaker part of the measure.
  • (n.) The rhythmical accent, which marks phrases and sections of a period.
  • (n.) The expressive emphasis and shading of a passage.
  • (n.) A mark placed at the right hand of a letter, and a little above it, to distinguish magnitudes of a similar kind expressed by the same letter, but differing in value, as y', y''.
  • (n.) A mark at the right hand of a number, indicating minutes of a degree, seconds, etc.; as, 12'27'', i. e., twelve minutes twenty seven seconds.
  • (n.) A mark used to denote feet and inches; as, 6' 10'' is six feet ten inches.
  • (v. t.) To express the accent of (either by the voice or by a mark); to utter or to mark with accent.
  • (v. t.) To mark emphatically; to emphasize.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I think you're probably right that the accent does degenerate along with Richard.
  • (2) For now, he leans on the bar – a big man, XL T-shirt – and, in a soft Irish accent, orders himself a small gin and tonic and a bottle of mineral water.
  • (3) We describe a right-handed native American who developed a foreign accent following damage to the left premotor region and white matter anterior to the head of the left caudate nucleus.
  • (4) The accent in rheumatism orthopedics should gradually shift toward early preventive operation.
  • (5) He does not appear to have a regional or working-class accent.
  • (6) Fifty-three years on, he has a broad Yorkshire accent but still speaks fluent Urdu: a boon in a constituency containing places such as Bradford, where 20% of the population are of Pakistani heritage.
  • (7) I first moved to New York aged 11, and found my accent provoked a certain suspicion.
  • (8) As he was detained, the gunman, wearing a balaclava and a bathrobe, allegedly repeated twice in French with an English accent: "The Anglophones are waking up," an apparent reference to the "maple spring" of student protests against the government that contributed to the snap election being called.
  • (9) Executive producer, played by Emily Mortimer Boy, do they work to explain Mortimer's English accent… Anyway, she's the show's new Anglo-American chief.
  • (10) His Scottish accent was only fleetingly used, something kept up his sleeve, as he said, "like a dirk for tight corners".
  • (11) One girl with a Scouse accent sees me taking notes and says: "Oi, get up me dear… stop writing youse!"
  • (12) Instead, let's hunt down whoever told Van Dyke an English accent just involves adding "guvnerrrr" to every other sentence.
  • (13) Up the hill, the prince was trying out his schoolboy French – " C'est un honneur pour nous d'être parmi vous … merci votre patience avec mon accent " – and was cheered for doing so.
  • (14) Memory confusions of temporal patterns in a discrimination task were characterized by the same hierarchy of inferred accent strength.
  • (15) We meet in her home city of Cologne, and although she speaks with only the faintest trace of a foreign accent, vocabulary often escapes her.
  • (16) A special accent was laid on the formation of the sporulation septum and its alterations in the course of spore delimitation and separation.
  • (17) Similar rhythms preserved accent coupling, whereas dissimilar rhythms did not.
  • (18) The Lib Dem and Labour leaders have Yorkshire seats, but neither possesses the matching accent.
  • (19) His film, The Angels' Share, a larky whisky heist, was screened with English as well as French subtitles at the festival, lest the Glaswegian accents prove a barrier for non-Scots.
  • (20) These are, in chronological order, Johann August Wilhelm Hedenus (the elder; 1760-1834), Friedrich August von Ammon (1799-1861) and Eduard Zeis (1807-1868); Zeis' career is reviewed briefly here with the accent on Dresden.

Diction


Definition:

  • (n.) Choice of words for the expression of ideas; the construction, disposition, and application of words in discourse, with regard to clearness, accuracy, variety, etc.; mode of expression; language; as, the diction of Chaucer's poems.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The prose rhythm and colloquial diction here work against exaggeration, but allow for humour.
  • (2) The enigmatic patience of the sentences, the pedantic syntax, the peculiar antiquity of the diction, the strange recessed distance of the writing, in which everything seems milky and sub-aqueous, just beyond reach – all of this gives Sebald his particular flavour, so that sometimes it seems that we are reading not a particular writer but an emanation of literature.
  • (3) If you ever feel tempted to say "status quo" or "cul de sac", for instance, Orwell will sneer at you for "pretentious diction".
  • (4) Now 86, Daddy – the 11th Duke of Marlborough - has the garbled, sticky plum crumble diction of the irredeemably posh.
  • (5) He turns his ­attention to today's male movie stars and their ­penchant for mumbling (Hopkins has always prided himself on his diction).
  • (6) Discriminant analyses, using both untransformed and range-corrected data made excellent post-dictions of group membership.
  • (7) Americans don't have passports, we don't meet many foreigners, and we think proper English diction is an indicator of condescension or homosexuality.
  • (8) The diction of the original tells us that its author was, broadly speaking, a northerner.
  • (9) It's a beautifully musical film all the way through, in fact, partly an effect of Katie Johnson's delivery as Mrs W : incredible gentle diction, all sweet bleats and trilly intonation.
  • (10) Only his co-host, Loyd Grossman, had a voice and diction to, if anything, rival Frost's own.
  • (11) This section was presented by Loyd Grossman, whose diction and presenting style were even more distinctive than Frost's.
  • (12) Nor could the chosen diction of the American have been further from the socially diagnostic wit of Jane Austen or the stuffed-pudding plenitude of the young Dickens.
  • (13) In one letter (to her parents), she raved about Michael Redgrave's Hamlet saying it made Olivier's 'beautiful diction, dramatic pauses, loud music and despairing cries sound like pure unadulterated ham'.
  • (14) Diction and fractures of resin teeth were more common problems in maxillae; cheek and lip biting was a more frequent postinsertion complication in the treatment of mandibles.
  • (15) Sebald's seemingly passive prose was in fact – to borrow Marianne Moore's memorable phrase – "diction galvanised against inertia".
  • (16) With the Instagram posts showing no sign of stopping we’ve come up with a short guide to the Chechen ruler’s dramatic diction to help you understand who the “dastardly villains” are; what threat they pose to “the nation that rose from its knees”.
  • (17) But I never really responded to the antique diction and syntax - it struck me at times as even older than the original.
  • (18) Twain would have been apoplectic at the presumption: one of the letters he included in his drafts, reprinted in the autobiography's first volume, is a rebuke to an editor who dared to alter the great man's diction in his essay on Joan of Arc .
  • (19) He takes his 19th-century Gothic diction from the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter , and a fair amount of his obsessive extremism from the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard .
  • (20) The tennis player Annabel Croft, when meeting her genuinely homeless "buddy" David, said, with the immaculate diction of a woman regarding the drinks tray at a garden party: "I have been very nervous about who I was going to meet but I'm pleasantly surprised!"