English▸ noun an Irish diacritic mark having the form of an acute accent, placed over a vowel to indicate that the letter should be pronounced with a long sound (e.g. É in Éireann and í in síneadh):
with a fada on the end, this becomes the Irish word for ballet
the report examined the inability of computer systems to use the síneadh fada.
– ORIGIN Irish síneadh fada, (in traditional Irish grammar) ‘long vowel’, from síneadh ‘action of stretching, extension’ + fada ‘long’.