Apex (diacritic)

In written Latin, the apex (plural "apices") is a mark with roughly the shape of an acute accent (´) or apostrophe (ʼ) that was sometimes placed over vowels to indicate that they were long.

The shape and length of the apex can vary, sometimes within a single inscription. While virtually all apices consist of a line sloping up to the right, the line can be more or less curved, and varies in length from less than half the height of a letter to more than the height of a letter. Sometimes, it is adorned at the top with a distinct hook, protruding to the left. Rather than being centered over the vowel it modifies, the apex is often considerably displaced to the right.[1]

Essentially the same diacritic, conventionally called in English the acute accent, is used today for the same purpose of denoting long vowels in a number of languages with Latin orthography, such as Irish (called in it the síneadh fada [ˈʃiːnʲə ˈfˠad̪ˠə] or simply fada "long"), Hungarian (hosszú ékezet [ˈhosːuː ˈeːkɛzɛt], from the words for "long" and "wedge"), Czech (called in it čárka [ˈtʃaːrka], "small line") and Slovak (dĺžeň [ˈdl̩ːʐeɲ], from the word for "long"), as well as for the historically long vowels of Icelandic.

  1. ^ Apex and Sicilicus, Revilo P. Oliver, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 87, No. 2. (Apr., 1966), p. 149.