acute
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /əˈkjuːt/
enpr: ə-kyo͞ot′
ipa: /əˈkjut/
rhymes: -uːt
Forms: form: acuter
form: more acute
form: acutest
form: most acute
Etymology: From Late Middle English acute (“of a disease or fever: starting suddenly and lasting for a short time; of a humour: irritating, sharp”), from Latin acūta, from acūtus (“sharp, sharpened”), perfect passive participle of acuō (“to make pointed, sharpen, whet”), from acus (“needle, pin”). The word is cognate to ague (“acute, intermittent fever”).
As regards the noun, which is derived from the verb, compare Middle English acūte (“severe but short-lived fever; of blood: corrosiveness, sharpness; musical note of high pitch”).
Senses: examples: text: It was an acute event.
text: Surprisingly, this analysis revealed that acute exposure to solvent vapors at concentrations below those associated with long-term effects appears to increase the risk of a fatal automobile accident. Furthermore, this increase in risk is comparable to the risk of death from leukemia after long-term exposure to benzene, another solvent, which has the well-known property of causing this type of cancer.
ref: 2013 July-August, Philip J. Bushnell, “Solvents, Ethanol, Car Crashes & Tolerance: How Risky is Inhalation of Organic Solvents?”, in American Scientist, Research Triangle Park, N.C.: Sigma Xi, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Jun 2013:
synonyms: fast
rapid
antonyms: leisurely
slow
glosses: Brief, quick, short.
examples: text: an acute accent or tone
text: The nimble Fly's Wings quicker were / Than those of her Competitor [a bee], / As may by this appear; / For an acuter Tone they made, / And in a ſharper Key they play'd, / (Which made the matter clear.)
ref: 1751, “a Lover of the Mathematicks” [pseudonym; Nathaniel Whittemore?], “Part II. New Paradoxes Solved.”, in A Mathematical Miscellany, in Four Parts., London: Printed for M. Cooper, […], →OCLC, paradox 61, stanza III, page 53:
text: The acuteness of sound in stringed instruments depends on three circumstances—length, thickness, and tension. The shorter, smaller, and tighter a string, the more acute the sound. […] In the violin, when you desire an acute sound, you tighten the string. When you wish a loud sound, you draw the bow over the strings heavily.
ref: 1851, William C. Larrabee, “Lecture X. Evidences of Design from the Structure and Adaptations of the External Senses.”, in B[enjamin] F[ranklin] Tefft, editor, Lectures on the Scientific Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, Cincinnati, Oh.: Published by L. Swormstedt & J. H. Power, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, […]; R. P. Thompson, printer, →OCLC, paragraph 233, page 177:
antonyms: grave
glosses: High or shrill.
examples: text: She had an acute sense of honour
text: Eagles have very acute vision.
text: Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother; but there was sense and good humour in her face, and her manners were perfectly unassuming and gentle. Elizabeth, who had expected to find in her as acute and unembarrassed an observer as ever Mr. Darcy had been, was much relieved by discerning such different feelings.
ref: 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter II, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume III, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, pages 37–38:
text: It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had become insufferably strained.
ref: 1912, Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Elders”, in Constance Garnett, transl., The Brothers Karamazov (Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky; 1), London: W[illiam] Heinemann, →OCLC; republished as The Brothers Karamazov, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, [1943], →OCLC, page 32:
text: Then, at three, for Neville's sake and for the sake of her marriage as undernourished and spectral as it had been rendered by absence, its substance being all in the future, and an honest hope of hearing some news or of extending solace to other women, not least those with children, who seemed each to have an acuter sense of the man she was missing than Alice had of Neville, she attended the Friday meeting for wives and mothers of prisoners of war at the School of the Arts.
ref: 2013, Thomas Keneally, Shame and the Captives, North Sydney, N.S.W.: Random House Australia, →ISBN; 1st Atria Books hardcover edition, New York, N.Y.: Atria, 2015, →ISBN, page 87:
synonyms: keen
powerful
strong
peracute
antonyms: dull
obtuse
slow
witless
glosses: Intense; sensitive; sharp.
examples: text: His need for medical attention was acute.
text: […] Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened. The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Chase—First Day”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 601:
synonyms: emergent
pressing
sudden
glosses: Urgent.
examples: text: 204. Eremophila abietina […] Corolla 23–35 mm long, cream or very pale lilac, lobes faintly metallic bluish green or lilac, tube occasionally brownish, prominently purple spotted; outer and inner surfaces glandular-pubescent; lobes acute, lobe of lower lip strongly reflexed.
ref: 2007 April 24, R[obert] J[ames] Chinnock, “Taxonomic Treatment of the Family Myoporaceae R. Br.”, in Eremophila and Allied Genera: A Monograph of the Plant Family Myoporaceae, Dural Delivery Centre, N.S.W.: Rosenberg Publishing, →ISBN, section XXV (Eremophila sec. Pulchrisepalae (12 spp.)), page 622:
topics: biology
botany
natural-sciences
antonyms: obtuse
subacute
glosses: With the sides meeting directly to form an acute angle (at an apex or base).
examples: text: The teacher pointed out the acute angle.
text: Chlorophosphuret of nitrogen (at ordinary temperatures) is a solid crystalline body. […] The form of the crystals, as obtained by sublimation, is that of a rhomboid, of which the obtuse angle measures 131° or 132°, the acute 48° or 49°: the acute angle of this rhomboid, either at one or both ends, is often truncated, when of course the angle formed is about 114°: the hexagonal prism is also found.
ref: 1850 March 30, J[ohn] H[all] Gladstone, “On Chlorophosphuret of Nitrogen and Its Products of Decomposition”, in Henry Watts, editor, The Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society of London, volume III, number X, London: Hippolyte Bailliere, […], published 1851, →OCLC, part I, page 138:
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
antonyms: obtuse
glosses: Less than 90 degrees.
raw_tags: of an angle
examples: text: an acute triangle
text: In order to be an acute triangle, all three angles of a triangle must be less than 90°. These triangles can have very prickly personalities. So, if you want to create images of porcupines, rugged mountains, or narrow pine trees in your geometric design, you may best do it by using acute triangles[…]. The most commonly used acute triangle in quiltmaking is the equilateral triangle[…]. All three of its angles are 60°.
ref: 1997, Joen Wolfrom, “The Fascination of Shapes”, in The Visual Dance: Creating Spectacular Quilts, Lafayette, Calif.: C&T Publishing, →ISBN; republished Lafayette, Calif.: C&T Publishing, 2009, →ISBN, page 39:
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
synonyms: acute-angled
antonyms: obtuse
obtuse-angled
glosses: Having all three interior angles measuring less than 90 degrees.
raw_tags: of a triangle
examples: text: Let this [the word alalal] be ſpoken as an Engliſh word, with the ſtrong accent on either ſyllable, or, on each, in repeating the word; and, no change of articulation diſturbing the ear, it will be abundantly evident that, with ordinary Engliſh pronunciation, the strengthened syllable has always the acuter tone, or, in muſical phraſe, the higher note.
ref: 1804, William Mitford, “Section IV. Of Tones or Accents, and Emphasis in English Speech, and of Their Connection with the Time or Quantity of Syllables.”, in An Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language, and of the Mechanism of Verse, Modern and Antient, 2nd edition, London: Printed by Luke Hansard, […], for T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies, […], →OCLC, pages 57–58:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: Of an accent or tone: generally higher than others.
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
phonology
sciences
coordinate_terms: grave
glosses: Sharp, produced in the front of the mouth. (See Grave and acute on Wikipedia.Wikipedia)
raw_tags: of a sound
examples: text: He dropped dead of an acute illness.
text: Of particular relevance to the ICU [intensive care unit] setting is ketorolac, a NSAID [non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug] that is being increasingly used for pain control in order to avoid problems of respiratory depression, sedation, and addiction associated with narcotics. […] ICU patients, who typically are under great stress from an acute illness that is often accompanied by multiorgan dysfunction including renal insufficiency, are especially prone to develop renal complications from ketorolac[…].
ref: 1995, G. J. Kaloyanides, “Drug-induced Acute Renal Failure”, in Rinaldo Bellomo, Claudio Ronco, editors, Acute Renal Failure in the Critically Ill (Update in Intensitve Care and Emergency Medicine; 20), Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, page 204:
topics: medicine
sciences
glosses: Of an abnormal condition of recent or sudden onset, in contrast to delayed onset; this sense does not imply severity, unlike the common usage.
examples: text: The acute symptoms resolved promptly.
text: Bats host many high-profile viruses that can infect humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and Ebola. A recent study explored the ecological variables that may contribute to bats’ propensity to harbor such zoonotic diseases by comparing them with another order of common reservoir hosts: rodents.
ref: 2013 May–June, Katie L. Burke, “In the News: Bat News”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, Research Triangle Park, N.C.: Sigma Xi, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 05 Jun 2017, page 193:
topics: medicine
sciences
antonyms: chronic
coordinate_terms: preacute
subacute
postacute
glosses: Of a short-lived condition, in contrast to a chronic condition; this sense also does not imply severity.
examples: text: The last letter of ‘café’ is ‘e’ acute.
text: A more conservative approach, particularly if your author is a skilled computer user, would be to replace the problem characters with simple words or codes that are guaranteed to transfer successfully between computers. For example, you could replace é with e-acute if that particular character is causing problems. […] The author could then do a search and replace to change all instances of e-acute back to é before publication.
ref: 2007, Geoff[rey J. S.] Hart, “Editing in Special Situations”, in Effective Onsceen Editing: New Tools for an Old Profession, Pointe-Claire, Que.: Diaskeuasis Publishing, →ISBN, page 404:
text: Commonly used European accents are available as below: / á Á a acute / […] / é É e acute / […] / í Í i acute / […] / ó Ó o acute / […] / ú Ú u acute
ref: 2017, [Michael] Mitchell, [Susan] Wightman, “Foreign Languages”, in Typographic Style Handbook, London: MacLehose Press, →ISBN, section 10.2.1 (Commonly Used Accents), page 143:
topics: communications
journalism
literature
media
orthography
publishing
writing
glosses: Of a letter of the alphabet, having an acute accent.
Derived terms: accent acute
acuity
acutance
acutangular
acute abdo
acute abdomen
acute accent
acute angle
acute-angled
acute-angled triangle
acute aortic syndrome
acute chest syndrome
acute cystitis
acute flaccid myelitis
acute kidney failure
acute kidney injury
acutely
acute lymphoblastic leukemia
acute membranous gingivitis
acute mountain sickness
acute necrotising ulcerative gingivitis
acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis
acuteness
acute oak decline
acute otitis media
acute-phase protein
acute radiation syndrome
acute renal failure
acute respiratory distress syndrome
acute retroviral syndrome
acute sedge
acute toxicity
acute triangle
acute ulcerative gingivitis
acutish
cute
double acute accent
fish acute toxicity syndrome
gravo-acute accent
hyperacute
nonacute
post-acute
severe acute respiratory syndrome
superacute
unacute
Related terms: ague