ˌ

ˌ

1. (IPA) secondary stress, i.e. weak stress.
2. (English phonetics) primary stress.

The mark is placed before the syllable. Rarely it may occur immediately before the vowel, but this is not standard IPA usage.

In British dictionaries such as the OED, the secondary stress mark is used for all stressed syllables in a word but the last, which takes the primary stress mark ⟨ˈ⟩.

In American dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, the secondary stress mark also occurs after the last stressed syllable, for syllables which are not stressed but whose vowels are not reduced, as on the syllable ship in the word battleship.

The mark may be doubled, ⟨ˌˌ⟩, for what has been sometimes analyzed as extra-weak stress, e.g. so-called tertiary stress (such as a syllable with a full but unstressed vowel – i.e. what Merriam-Webster uses the single mark for). This is not actually stress and not IPA usage.

• ˈ