acutance

English

WOTD – 18 August 2025

Etymology

From acute (“intense, sensitive, sharp”, adjective) +‎ -ance (suffix forming nouns indicating conditions or states).[1]

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /əˈkjuːt(ə)n(t)s/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /əˈkjutn̩(t)s/, [-ɾn̩(t)s]
  • Audio (General American); /əˈkjutn̩s/:(file)
  • Hyphenation: acut‧ance

Noun

acutance (countable and uncountable, plural acutances) (photography)

  1. (uncountable) Edge contrast or sharpness in an image; also, a measure of this. [from mid 20th c.]
  2. (countable) An instance of the edge contrast or sharpness in an image.

Translations

References

  1. ^ “acutance, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “acutance, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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