Home › Glossary › Letter B

bachelor

Noun
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 bachelor is traditionally an unmarried adult man; the word can also refer to someone who holds an undergraduate academic degree.

Detailed Definition
Bachelor is a common word today, but in older poetry it can carry social overtones about marriage and household status. Here it matters because the poem’s joke depends on whether the traveler is married or not.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick’s bachelorhood becomes a comic target in debates about marriage; “The bachelor locked his one blue cup beside the stove” uses the noun for an unmarried man without judging him; Byron’s Don Juan playfully invokes bachelor and marriage conventions in aristocratic society; In historical poetry, “a bachelor’s room” may suggest solitude, independence, or social expectation; Modern usage should avoid assuming that bachelorhood defines a person’s identity beyond marital status
Additional Notes
The word in "Now art thou a bachelor" is ordinary, but in this poem it is used in an older social sense that may need brief clarification.; Found in the poem, The Well of St. Keyne by Robert Southey
Also Known As
single man unwed gentleman lone wolf
Skip to main content