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Anemic

Disease
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

Lacking vigor, color, or strength, as if drained of blood. Often suggests spiritual as well as bodily depletion.

Detailed Definition
Anemic describes a body or landscape diminished in color, warmth, and force. In poetry, it may characterize a pale face, weak dawn, exhausted city, or bloodless emotion. Though rooted in the medical condition of anemia, the term frequently works figuratively, allowing poets to suggest a life thinned by grief, poverty, fear, or long decline. Its muted sound suits imagery of pallor, frailty, and waning vitality.
Example
Example in poetry:
In a hospital poem, the speaker describes an anemic child whose “wrist was thin as a stem beneath the sheet,” using pallor and weakness to create pathos; A poet might write, “Anemic dawn seeped through the blinds,” using the medical adjective metaphorically for weak, colorless light; In a war poem, “the anemic soldiers queued for broth” can suggest both physical malnutrition and the exhaustion of a defeated army; A love poem could say, “After you left, my heart kept an anemic beat,” making illness a metaphor for diminished emotional life; In a city elegy, “Anemic grass pushed through the concrete” uses the word to portray fragile growth deprived of nourishment
Additional Notes
In poetry, anemic often describes more than physical illness: a landscape, voice, memory, or relationship may seem pale, weak, and deprived of life. Its associations with blood can suggest lost passion, emotional exhaustion, poverty, grief, or spiritual decline. Writers may use it to create a drained atmosphere, as in an “anemic dawn” or “anemic hope.” Compare wan, pallid, bloodless, depleted, and enervated; each implies weakness, but anemic especially evokes a lack of vitality or nourishing force.
Also Known As
Anaemic Anæmic
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