proparoxytone

In linguistics, a proparoxytone (, ) is a word with either stress (in stress-based languages) or a high accent (in languages with a pitch accent) on the antepenultimate syllable (that is, the third-to-last syllable). Examples of this in English are the words words "cinema" and "operational". It contrasts with paroxytone (on the penultimate second-to-last syllable), and oxytone (on the ultimate last syllable).

In English, most nouns of three or more syllables are proparoxytones, except in words ending in –tion or –sion, which tend to be paroxytones (operation, equivocation). This tendency is so strong in English that it frequently leads to the stress on derived words being on a different part of the root. For example, the root photograph gives rise to the nouns photography and photographer, family → familiar and familial. (In many dialects of English, the i in family is even deleted entirely, and still has the stress in familial and familiar.)