noun
- the third syllable from the end of a word
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- In the word ‘beautiful’, the antepenult is ‘beau’.
- The stress falls on the antepenult in ‘photography’.
- Students learning Latin must identify the antepenult to apply stress rules.
- The antepenult of ‘incredible’ is the syllable ‘in’.
- Linguists use the term antepenult when analyzing word structure.