diaeresis

Definitions

• (orthography) A diacritic ( ¨ ) placed over a vowel letter (especially the second of two consecutive ones) indicating that it is sounded separately, usually forming a distinct syllable, as in the English words naïve (naïve), Noël (Noël) and Brontë (Brontë), the French haïr (haïr) and the Dutch ruïne (ruïne).
• (linguistics) Distraction; the separation of a vowel, often a diphthong, into two distinct syllables.
• (prosody) A natural break in rhythm when a word ends at the end of a metrical foot, in a line of verse.
• (linguistics) Hiatus; the occurrence of separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables without an intervening consonant.