stress-timed

[ stres-tahymd ]

adjective

, Phonetics.

1. having a rhythm in which stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time, regardless of the number of intervening unstressed syllables.

Example Sentences

In a 2006 study published in Psychology of Learning and Motivation, McGill University researchers write that Spanish features a “regular beat pattern in which each syllable coincides approximately with a beat, whereas stress-timed languages like English tend to have beats on stressed syllables.”

From Slate