Home › Glossary › Letter A

adjacent figure

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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 poetic device where figurative expressions are placed next to each other for emphasis or contrast

Detailed Definition
Adjacent figure denotes a rhetorical or imagistic device wherein two contrasting or complementary figures are placed side by side within a single line or stanza to heighten tension, irony, or harmony; this proximity forces the reader to consider their relationship directly, such as placing “a cradle and a coffin” in adjacent positions to evoke life’s fragility, thereby intensifying the poem’s emotional and symbolic impact through spatial contiguity.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Shakespeare’s sonnets, “fair” and “rare” often appear as an adjacent figure; In Emily Dickinson, “hope” and “feather” form an adjacent figure in “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”; In Langston Hughes’s “Harlem,” “dream” and “dry” are adjacent figures in “Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?”; In Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror,” “silver” and “exact” function as an adjacent figure to establish tone.
Additional Notes
adjacent figure: A rhetorical or poetic image that appears directly next to another for immediate comparison or reinforcement.
Also Known As
Neighbouring figure Contiguous figure Side-by-side form Collateral metaphor
Skip to main content