Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To give emphasis to; stress.
  • transitive verb To cause to appear important or deserving of attention.
  • transitive verb To give prominence of sound to (a syllable or word) in pronouncing or in accordance with a metrical pattern.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To utter or pronounce with emphasis; render emphatic; lay stress upon: as, to emphasize a syllable, word, or declaration; to emphasize a passage in reading.
  • To bring out clearly or distinctly; make more obvious or more positive; give a stronger perception of.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To utter or pronounce with a particular stress of voice; to make emphatic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb give extra weight to (a communication)
  • verb to stress, single out as important

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From emphasis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin, from Ancient Greek – see emphasis.

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