verb ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To stress, give emphasis or extra weight to (something). transitive

   "His two-fingered gesture emphasized what he had told his boss to do with his job."

2. 2
   to stress, single out as important wordnet
3. 3
   give extra weight to (a communication) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

stressunderscorestressunderscoreaccentaccent

Antonyms

All antonyms

de emphasizede-emphasizedownplaysoft-pedal

Example

More examples

"You should emphasize that fact."

Etymology

Latin, from Ancient Greek – see emphasis.

Related phrases

emphasize everything and nothing is emphasizedto emphasize everything is to emphasize nothing

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