The <dfn></dfn> tags are used to indicatede the definition meaning of a word, phrase or term.
except means other than; accept means to receive.
<dfn>except</dfn> means other than; <dfn>accept</dfn> means to receive.
The <dfn> does exactly the same thing as the <i> (Italic) tag. Remember, although xhtml is xml, html is not used to identify or define the structure of data, it's use to define how a webpage should be laid out visually, for example headings, paragraphs, lists etc. So there's really no reason not to use the more common <i> tag.
except means other than; accept means to receive.
<span style="font-style:italic">xcept</span> means other than; <span style="font-style:italic">accept</span> means to receive.
Although neither of these tags is deprecated, so future browsers should continue to support them, because style is now the prefered way to define text and font features, these tags are likely to become deprecated at some point in the future. So you should prefer to set a style attribute for the definition word as shown above.
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