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Does indent carry an accent on the first or the second vowel?

I've seen both in IPA. My non-native ear would tend to favor the first.

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6  
Purely subjective, but I'd put the accent on the first syllable for the noun sense, and on the second as a verb. – FumbleFingers Dec 13 '11 at 18:28
2  
@FumbleFingers: Likewise. Confirmed by dictionary references, so not so subjective. – Irene Dec 13 '11 at 18:31
I admit it was me who voted to close on the grounds I thought the question was "too localised". But I wouldn't have done that if I'd seen @Daniel's comment below - I now think there really is a general principle whereby noun/verb are often distinguished by stress on the first/second syllable, which it's worth being consciously aware of. – FumbleFingers Dec 13 '11 at 21:03
Related questions for “record”, “defect”. – RegDwighт♦ May 14 '12 at 14:41

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Personally, I would say "ind-ent" for the noun, and "ind-ent" for the verb.

Ind-ent for the noun is pretty much universal.

For the verb, it varies from person to person. I don't perceive a geographical pattern.

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+ 1 : the obvious follow-up is does pronounciation rule generalise to other noun/verb twins? – cindi Dec 13 '11 at 19:17
3  
Most two-syllable words which can be nouns or verbs carry the emphasis on the first syllable as a noun, and on the second as a verb (cf. address, combine, etc), though I'm sure you could find exceptions in plenty, if you tried. – Daniel δ Dec 13 '11 at 19:21
Interesting, I'd break the word up as in-DENT(v) or IN-dent(n), which is how the dictionary.com breaks it up (interestingly they don't show the verb form accented on the second syllable as an alternative but I think they should). Is this a typo, or is the syllable separation regional? – DeepYellow Dec 14 '11 at 1:20
I can't see how ind-ent would be pronounced differently from in-dent. My hyphen isn't intended imply a pause, and I don't think you can emphasise the consonant 'd'. So it was an arbitrary choice to put the hyphen right of the 'd'. – slim Dec 14 '11 at 9:59

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