Home › Glossary › Letter A

Ammonite

Geology
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 spiral fossil shell from an extinct marine animal. It often suggests deep time, recurrence, and a sea withdrawn into stone.

Detailed Definition
An ammonite is the fossilized, coiled shell of a marine cephalopod that lived millions of years ago. Its visible spiral makes it especially resonant in poetry: a small architecture of vanished water, pressure, and time. A poet may use an ammonite to evoke ancestral memory, cyclical history, or a voice preserved after extinction. Found in rock, it joins the delicacy of a shell to the endurance of stone.
Example
Example in poetry:
The ammonite's spiral becomes a clock in the limestone, winding time back to the sea; A poet might compare a curled sleeping child to an ammonite fossil, preserving tenderness in stone; “I held an ammonite” can introduce a lyric about extinction, ancient oceans, and inheritance; The shell's chambers offer a metaphor for memory, each ammonite chamber holding a vanished tide
Additional Notes
Ammonites are common index fossils, helping date rock layers. Their spiral can support images of cycles, burial, and time coiled within matter.
Also Known As
Ammon's Horn Ammonite Fossil
Skip to main content