Emphasis

//ˈɛmfəsɪs// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Special weight or forcefulness given to something considered important. countable, uncountable

    "He paused for emphasis before saying who had won."

  2. 2
    intensity or forcefulness of expression wordnet
  3. 3
    Special attention or prominence given to something. countable, uncountable

    "Anglia TV's emphasis is on Norwich and district."

  4. 4
    the relative prominence of a syllable or musical note (especially with regard to stress or pitch) wordnet
  5. 5
    Prominence given to a syllable or words, by raising the voice or printing in italic or underlined type. countable, uncountable

    "He used a yellow highlighter to indicate where to give emphasis in his speech."

Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    special and significant stress by means of position or repetition e.g. wordnet
  2. 7
    The phonetic or phonological feature that distinguishes emphatic consonants from other consonants. countable, uncountable
  3. 8
    special importance or significance wordnet
  4. 9
    The use of boldface, italics, or other such formatting to highlight text. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
stressaccentaccentaccentuationalexandrineamphibrach

Example

More examples

"We should not place too much emphasis on money."

Etymology

From Latin emphasis, from Ancient Greek ἔμφασις (émphasis, “significance”), from ἐμφαίνω (emphaínō, “I present, I indicate”), from ἐν- (en-, “in”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “I show”).

Related phrases

de-emphasismy emphasis

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.