Home › Glossary › Letter A

Adynaton sequence

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 series of impossibility statements used to emphasize the strength of an assertion or feeling

Detailed Definition
Adynaton sequence is a poetic structure built around a series of hyperbolic impossibilities—such as “when rivers run backward” or “when stars fall to earth”—used to emphasize the unlikelihood or eternal nature of a sentiment, typically love or grief; rooted in classical rhetoric, it intensifies emotional stakes through paradoxical negation of natural order.
Example
Example in poetry:
An adynaton sequence lists impossible events to stress impossibility, as in W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening”: “I’ll love you till the ocean / Is folded and hung up to dry…”
Additional Notes
Adynaton sequence: A series of hyperbolic impossibilities used to emphasize emotional extremity (e.g., "When rivers run backward..."); rooted in classical rhetoric; related to the figure of adynaton.
Also Known As
Impossibility sequence Hyperbolic impossibilities Adynaton series
Skip to main content