Citations:inverted circumflex

Noun: (phonology) a dipping tone

 * 1810, Benjamin Humphrey Smart, A Practical Grammar of English Pronunciation (London: John Richardson, Royal Exchange; J. Johnson and Co., St Paul’s Churchyard), chapter V: “Of the Pronunciation of Sentences”, § 5: ‘Inflection’, page 335
 * The inflection, which begins upward and ends downward on the same syllable, called the circumflexed slide, is exemplified by the proper utterance of the word they in the succeeding instance:      Not he, but they are in fault.  And the inflection, which is just the reverse of this, namely, which begins downward and ends upward, called the inverted circumflex, may be instanced by the same word in Italic, as follows:      They tell us to be moderate; — but they, they are to wallow in profusion.
 * 1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice (Philadelphia: J. Maxwell), “Introduction”, pages ix⁽¹⁾ and x⁽²⁾
 * ⁽¹⁾ Mr. Walker does triumphantly claim the discovery of the inverted circumflex accent, or the downward and upward continued movement.
 * ⁽²⁾ Greek and Roman writers tell us, indefinitely, of the acute, grave, and circumflex movements; and these, with the newly described inverted circumflex, have, at a recent date, first been formally regarded, in the art of speaking the English language.

used to denote a rising tone

 * 1844, An Introduction to the Art of Reading (2nd ed.; Dublin: published by direction of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland), part second, observation VII, page 107, note
 * This rising inflection will be indicated by an inverted circumflex ( ˇ ) being placed over the last syllable in the clause that bears the primary accent.

used in the transcription of hieroglyphs

 * 1874, Report of the Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Orientalists held in London (Trübner), page 57
 * For the hieroglyphs Inundated Garden and Pool also, although they are not interchangeable with one another in the Old Egyptian roots, it was taken as a settled point that the pronunciation of both was one and the same, or, at any rate, that they should both have the same notation. Accordingly the transcription for both remains s, surmounted by the inverted circumflex accent.

Noun: =

 * 1876, Appletons’ Journal (D. Appleton and Co.), volume 15, page 511
 * In this way c surmounted by an inverted circumflex accent stands for our sound of ch, which in Russian, Polish, or Servian words, we usually see spelled cz.