Accent

In this article or essay, I will illustrate the meanings of the word Accent by referring to their noun and verb forms. This is because the meanings are somehow dependent on their forms.

The word Accent as a noun means the way of pronouncing words. The difference in pronunciation of a Language gives birth to different accents of that Language. This strictly excludes the syntactical differences (which comes in the purlieus of the word Dialect) and the only thing that can be talked about other than pronunciation is the geographical regions that create a direct impact on the differences in accent. The indigenous people can quickly understand almost all the dialects of their Language; the point when it becomes unintelligible the accent becomes the dialect. 

The word Accent as a verb means to emphasize a part of something by raising the tone, sound or physical appearance. The verb-ial meanings of Accent have strong roots in the previous (noun) meanings, which means the way to pronounce words. Both of the forms of words have the same etymology as well. Notice in both the forms that the word Accent has a sense of "noticeable distinctiveness" in it. Consider this sentence:

These days, very few teenage girls care to accent their bodies with regular exercise and hygienic intake of food.

In the above sentence, the word Accent is used in terms of "beauty" and "noticeable distinctiveness", which makes it a package-word. The words Stress and Emphasize are sometimes mistakenly considered as the equivalent because of the physical appearance of these words. Stress and Emphasize are the lesser degrees of the word Accent because the latter has more semantic space. To compare correctly: if Stress and Emphasize are dry, acute and yet grand, Accent is soft, beautified and sublime. Consider this sentence that I saw in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English:

The dress emphasized the shape of her body.

I say,

The dress accented the shape of her body.

Do you think that the meaning has changed now, even if by the minutest fraction?

I think, yes - there is a change. People who are accustomed to listening and using the word Emphasize might argue that emphasize is the most accurate word to use here. They can keep to their point, but I would prefer to probably use the sentence in the contexts where I am emphasizing the body's shape; whereas, I will use the second sentence in the contexts where I am emphasizing the distinctively enhanced beauty of that shape.The word "beauty" sidles into focus when I read the phrase, "accented the shape of her body".