Definition of "diacritic" [di•a•crit•ic]

• Diacritical. (adjective)
• Medicine Diagnostic or distinctive. (adjective)
• A mark, such as the cedilla of façade or the acute accent of resumé, added to a letter to indicate a special phonetic value or distinguish words that are otherwise graphically identical. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Two of the problems that you mention, are lack of a GA that does the focussing job of RP, and the disarray of phonetic, alphabetic and diacritic systems used by different US publishers in their dictionaries."
• "AutoCorrect is programmed with a number of two - or three-key combinations that will correct the appearance of a letter with a diacritic."
• "The French feminine name, however, is “Michelle”, and carries no diacritic. kid bitzer Says:"