1. Plural of diacritical; marks or signs placed above, below, or through letters to indicate pronunciation, stress, or meaning (such as accents, umlauts, tildes, or cedillas).
Usage: Also called diacritical marks or diacritics.; Commonly used in linguistics and typography.

Examples

• The word 'café' uses a diacritical mark on the final 'e' to show pronunciation.
• Spanish uses diacriticals like the tilde in 'mañana' to change word meaning.
• When typing in French, diacriticals such as accents and cedillas are essential.
• The German umlaut is one of the most recognizable diacriticals in European languages.
• Without proper diacriticals, some words in Portuguese would be ambiguous.
• Linguists study how different languages employ diacriticals to convey grammatical information.
• Many computer keyboards require special key combinations to produce diacriticals.