ACUTE ACCENT

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ACUTE ACCENT. A right-inclined oblique stroke over a letter, as in French é (café, élite, née), transliterated Sanskrit ś (śastra, Siva), Spanish (to mark the vowels of stressed syllables, as in nación), and the rising tonal ACCENT of classical Greek (logikós, prótasis). In English, the acute accents present in loans from other languages are often dropped (cafe, elite, nee) or replaced by some other device (such as h in shastra, Shiva), except when the use of foreign conventions is necessary for accuracy or effect.