Consider, for example, changes in the stress on many of those words that can function as either nouns or verbs—words like defect, reject, disguise, and so on. Until about the time of Shakespeare all such words were stressed on the second syllable. But then three exceptions arose—outlaw, rebel, and record—in which the stress moved to the first syllable when they were used as nouns (e.g., we re bel′ against a reb′el; we re ject′ a re′ject).
