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artless

Adjective
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

Artless describes someone or something natural, simple, and unaffected, often suggesting innocent sincerity rather than deliberate cleverness or artifice.

Detailed Definition
In literary use, artless can mean innocent, plain, or unstudied rather than merely 'without art.' The poem uses it to describe a song that is admired for its simplicity.
Example
Example in poetry:
“All sing it now, all praise its artless art” uses artless to mean seemingly natural or unstudied, not without skill; Robert Burns’s plain-speaking lyrics are often praised for an artless, songlike directness; William Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads values language “really used by men”; in a contemporary lyric, an artless voice may sound conversational while remaining carefully shaped
Additional Notes
Artless in the quoted line is a literary adjective whose older sense of 'simple' or 'unaffected' may be unfamiliar to readers.; Found in the poem, Vos Non Vobis by Edith M. Thomas
Also Known As
innocent simple naive unrefined
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