Accent, ak'sent, an emphasis placed on a certain syllable of a word by which it is made more prominent than the other syllables. In words which contain more than two syllables there may be more than one accent, but one is always stronger than the others, and is known therefore as the primary accent, while the others are secondary, as in syn'copa'tion. The tendency at present in English is toward throwing the accent back towards the beginning of the word as far as euphony permits, as incom'parable. In music, accent is the stress placed on certain tones in a bar of music. It falls always in the first part of the bar, and in long measures, as in words of several syllables, there may be a primary accent and one or two slight, secondary accents.