English Word Stress Rules

WORD STRESS RULES

1 Stress on first syllable

   Most two-syllable nouns and adjectives have stress on the first syllable:

   e.g. BUTter                 PRETty

2 Stress on the last syllable

   Most two-syllable verbs have stress on the last syllable:

   e.g. beGIN                   proDUCE

3 Stress on penultimate syllable (second from the end)

   Words ending in ‘ic’:

   e.g. STAtic                  reaLIStic

   Words ending in ‘sion’ and ‘tion’:

   e.g. teleVIsion             soLUtion

4 Stress on anti-penultimate syllable (third from the end)

   Words ending in ‘cy’, ‘ty’, ‘phy’, ‘gy’:

   e.g. deMOcracy           reliaBIlity

   Words ending in ‘al’:

   e.g. CRItical                ecoNOmical

5 ‘Polysyllabic’ words (words with many syllables)

   These usually have more than one stress, i.e. a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ stress:

   e.g. interNAtional       antibiOtic

   Often such words contain a prefix (as with ‘inter’ and ‘anti’ above) and

   this prefix has a secondary stress (this is common with many long technical words).

6 ‘Compound’ words (words with two parts)

   If the compound is a noun, the stress goes on the first part:

   e.g. GREENhouse       BLACKbird

   If the compound is an adjective, the stress goes on the second part:

   e.g. bad-TEMpered     old-FASHioned

   If the compound is a verb, the stress goes on the second part:

   e.g. underSTAND       overLOOK