CIRCUMFLEX

CIRCUMFLEX, in Grammar, an accent serving to note or distinguish a syllable of an intermediate sound between acute and grave, and generally somewhat long. The Greeks had three accents, the acute, the grave, and the circumflex, formed thus, $\backslash acute\{a\}$, $\backslash grave\{a\}$, $\backslash circ$. The acute raises the voice, and the grave lowers it, while the circumflex is a kind of undulation or wavering of the voice, be-

tween the two. It is seldom used among the moderns, except to show the omission of a letter, which makes the syllable long and open; a thing much more frequent in the French than in our language. Thus they write pâte for paste; tête for teste; fumes for fumes, and the like: they also use the circumflex in the participles; some of their authors writing connex, peu, others connu, pû, and so on. Father Buffier is at a loss for the reason of the circumflex on this occasion.

The form of the Greek circumflex was anciently the same with that of ours, viz. $\backslash acute\{a\}$; being a composition or union of the other two accents; but the copyists changing the form of the characters, and introducing the running hand, changed also the form of the circumflex accent; and instead of making a just angle, rounded it off, adding a dash through too much haste, and thus formed an $s$ laid horizontally, which produced this figure $\backslash circ$, instead of $\backslash acute\{a\}$.