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Inlinguistics, a paroxytone (Greek: παροξύτονος, paroxýtonos) is a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the second-to-last syllable,[1]: 121 such as the English word potáto.
In English, most words ending in -ic are paroxytones: músic, frántic, and phonétic but not rhétoric, aríthmetic (noun), and Árabic.
InItalian and Portuguese, most words are paroxytones. In Polish, almost all multisyllabic words are paroxytones except for certain verb conjugations and a few words of foreign origin.
In medieval Latin lyric poetry, a paroxytonic line or half-line is one in which the penultimate syllable is stressed, as in the second half of the verse "Estuans intrinsecus || ira vehementi."
Related concepts are proparoxytone (stress on the third-to-last syllable) and oxytone (stress on the last syllable).
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