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alack

Archaic Terms
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

An exclamation expressing sorrow, regret, or disappointment; often paired with "alas" to intensify lamentation in dramatic or elegiac poetry.

Detailed Definition
“Alack” functions as a mild interjection of lament, often paired with “alas” in Renaissance poetry and drama. It conveys personal grief or empathetic sorrow without overwhelming intensity, suiting moments of gentle pathos. Its brevity allows seamless integration into dialogue or soliloquy, where it punctuates emotional shifts. Poets used it to humanize characters or underscore irony, especially when fate intervenes in domestic or romantic plots.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Alack, the day! My love is dead," cries Juliet in Shakespeare’s tragedy; In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: "Alack, my heart’s too full of fear"; "Alack, that beauty should so soon decay," writes a sonneteer mourning youth; Milton uses "alack" in a lament for lost innocence in Comus; "Alack, the noble steed has fallen!" cries the squire in an epic fragment; Alack, the rose is withered on the bough.
Additional Notes
“Alack” is an interjection expressing grief or regret, often paired with “alas” but slightly milder; it appears in dramatic monologues and lyric poetry to signal emotional vulnerability or lament, especially in Elizabethan and Jacobean verse.
Also Known As
alas alas for woe alackaday
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