capable of distinguishing; "students having superior diacritic powers"; "the diacritic elements in culture"- S F Nadel
That separates or distinguishes; applied to points or marks used to distinguish letters of similar form, or different sounds of the same letter, as, ā, ă, ä, ō, &obreve;, etc
: A symbol in writing used with a letter to indicate a different pronunciation, stress, tone, or meaning, also called "tone marks" when used to indicate tones, e.g. in Vietnamese or pinyin (romanticized Chinese Mandarin)