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accumulation

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A rhetorical device where a series of words or phrases build up to emphasize meaning

Detailed Definition
A rhetorical and structural technique involving the piling up or gathering of words, phrases, images, or clauses to create emphasis through abundance. In poetry, accumulation builds intensity through repetition with variation, listing, or cataloging. The technique can create overwhelming effects, suggest plenitude, or embody obsessive attention to detail. Distinguished from mere repetition by the addition of new elements with each iteration, accumulation moves forward while building up, creating both momentum and mass in the verse structure.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” accumulation appears through catalogs like “The carpenter dresses his plank… the married and unmarried children ride home… the pilot secures his moorings”; Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12 uses accumulation of time-bound images: “the brave day sunk in hideous night… the violet past prime… sable curls all silvered o’er with white”; In Ginsberg’s “Howl,” accumulation builds intensity: “who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking… who sank all night in submarine light”; Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—” accumulates sensory details around death: “the Stillness in the Room… the Eyes around… the Breaths… the Fly with Blue… uncertain stumbling Buzz”; In Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again,” accumulation lists marginalized voices: “I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart… I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars… I am the red man driven from the land”.
Additional Notes
Accumulation is a rhetorical device where details, images, or clauses are piled up for emphasis or emotional effect; effective in catalog poems or crescendos leading to a climax.
Also Known As
Amplification Enumerative verse Listing device Congeries Conglobation
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