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An ornament: the written note, its neighbour a step above or below, and the written note again, played quickly.
A mordent gives a note a quick bite of emphasis, most at home on strong beats in Baroque keyboard music, where it starts on the beat with the written note. Make the direction clear: in Baroque ornament tables the sign with a vertical stroke is the lower mordent and the plain sign the upper one (the Pralltriller, or inverted mordent), but later usage blurs the names, so write the notes out or add a footnote when it matters. A small accidental beside the sign alters the neighbour.
Mordent is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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