Dictionary.com
definitions

unstressed

[uhn-strest]
|
SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR unstressed ON THESAURUS.COM

adjective

without stress or emphasis, as a syllable in a word.
not receiving or subjected to stress, wear, etc.: the unstressed parts of a car body.

RELATED CONTENT

Ode To The Schwa
How do I love thee? Let me count the schwas. Not exactly what Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in Sonnet 43 . . . but we like it all the same. Why? Because it finally pays tribute to the most frequent vowel sound in English: the schwa. What is the schwa and how does it sound? Simply put, the schwa is a reduced vowel sound written as …
READ MORE
Poetic Foot vs. Meter
Poetry has a lot of moving parts. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re starting to explore poetic analysis. Poetic foot and meter are a great place to start. Once you have these basics down, the rest becomes a lot easier. A poetic foot is a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. Poetic meter refers to the number of feet …
READ MORE

RELATED WORDS

poor, quiet, dull, thin, small, feeble, low, dim, distant, gentle, imperceptible, inaudible, indistinct, muffled, pale, slight, whispered, bated, reedy, stifled

Origin of unstressed

First recorded in 1880–85; un-1 + stress + -ed2
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for unstressed

Historical Examples of unstressed

British Dictionary definitions for unstressed

unstressed

adjective

carrying relatively little stress; unemphasized
phonetics of, relating to, or denoting the weakest accent in a word or breath group, which in some languages, such as English or German, is also associated with a reduction in vowel quality to a centralized (i) or (a)
prosody (of a syllable in verse) having no stress or accent
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012