Proparoxytone

Proparoxytone ( _el. προπαροξύτονος, "proparoxýtonos") is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate syllable, that is, the last but two, "e.g" the English words "acromegaly" and "operational". Related terms are paroxytone (stress on the last but one) and oxytone (accented on the last one).

Ernst Robert Curtius offers an interesting use of the term in a footnote (Ch. 8, n. 33) of his "European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages". He is commenting on this passage from Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel's didactic poem on grammar:

:"Partibus inferior jacet interiectio cunctis":"Ultima namque sedet et sine laude manet."

Here is Curtius' note:

"Sad is the lot of the interjection, for of all the parts of speech it has the lowest place. There is none to praise it." On the way from Latin to French the penultimate syllable of the proparoxytone succumbed. Mallarmé was so touched by this, that he wrote a prose-poem on the "Death of the Penultimate" ("Le Démon de l'analogie" in "Divagations"). It ends: Je m'enfuis, bizarre, personne condamné à porter probablement le deuil de l'explicable Penultième." Grammar too has its tragedies.