Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A symbol ( ¯ ) placed over a vowel to show that it has a long sound.
- noun The horizontal mark ( ¯ ) used to indicate a stressed or long syllable in a foot of verse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In grammar, a short horizontal line placed over a vowel to show that it is long in quantity, or, as in English, has a “long” sojnd: opposed to the breve, or mark of a short vowel.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Pron.) A short, straight, horizontal mark [-], placed over vowels to denote that they are to be pronounced with a long sound; as, ā, in dāme; ē, in sēam, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun orthography A short, straight,
horizontal diacritical mark (¯ ) placed over any of variousletters . It usually is used to indicate that the pronunciation of the vowel is long, inMandarin pinyin (Chinese), it indicates the firsttone , e.g. chūzūchē.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a diacritical mark (-) placed above a vowel to indicate a long sound
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word macron.
Examples
-
Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and the short mark is called a breve.
Archive 2009-09-01 2009
-
For years, though, the dude studying the macron was my pet example of scholarship's willful obscurity; I'm pretty sure I trotted out that story more than once when explaining why I didn't think I should go to grad school.
Archive 2008-04-01 Flavia 2008
-
For years, though, the dude studying the macron was my pet example of scholarship's willful obscurity; I'm pretty sure I trotted out that story more than once when explaining why I didn't think I should go to grad school.
Ferule & Fescue Flavia 2008
-
These are differentiated in the beginner Latin-Reader textbooks using a 'macron' which is a bar that goes over the long characters.
-
My favorite dessert is the coconut only macaroon, and the other is hot chocolate with a dark chocolate French macron.
-
An analysis of the use of the macron in Greek texts of a certain period.
Ferule & Fescue Flavia 2008
-
I also corrected a missing macron in Akkadian muḫaddū which is important because the length is a sign of a reduction of a weak consonant.
-
I also corrected a missing macron in Akkadian muḫaddū which is important because the length is a sign of a reduction of a weak consonant.
Archive 2008-02-01 2008
-
An analysis of the use of the macron in Greek texts of a certain period.
Archive 2008-04-01 Flavia 2008
-
Shokonsha の第一音節、Shinto の第二音節、Togo は二つの音節とも o に macron が附されてゐるが入力の便宜上省いた。
zeke commented on the word macron
To type a macron on Max OS X, follow these instructions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Macrons
June 20, 2011