Home › Glossary › Letter A

Auditory

Metaphysics
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

Poetic imagery and conceits that appeal to the sense of hearing, using sound, music, rhythm, and acoustic phenomena. This sensory approach helps embody abstract metaphysical concepts through auditory experience.

Detailed Definition
Metaphysical poets employ auditory conceits to suggest divine presence, spiritual connection, or intellectual revelation through sound imagery. The music of language itself becomes a vehicle for exploring metaphysical themes, with rhythm, rhyme, and sonic patterns reinforcing the idea that eternal or divine truths can be perceived through the ear and internalized through the body's response to sound.
Example
Example in poetry:
Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” emphasizes the auditory experience of the bird’s song as a portal to transcendence; Emily Dickinson’s dashes and slant rhymes create an internal auditory rhythm mimicking thought; Walt Whitman’s free verse in “Song of Myself” uses cataloguing to produce a rhythmic, almost chant-like auditory effect; T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” layers multiple voices and languages to create dissonant auditory textures; Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm” in “The Windhover” mimics the sounds of flight and praise; Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” uses harsh consonants and nursery-rhyme cadences to convey trauma through sound.
Additional Notes
Auditory in metaphysical contexts often refers to how sound—especially divine or inner voices—mediates between material and spiritual realms; poets use auditory imagery (e.g., silence, echoes, music of the spheres) to evoke ineffable truths, with Donne’s “Hymn to God My God” using liturgical cadences to mirror theological harmony and the soul’s attunement to divine order.
Also Known As
Sound-based Aural Sonic Auditory Imagery
Skip to main content