A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter B

Baggage

Archaic Terms
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

An insulting term for a woman, implying worthlessness, moral looseness, or social inferiority.

Detailed Definition
In older literary usage, baggage was a strongly derogatory word applied to women, suggesting they were troublesome, immoral, or contemptible. Common in Early Modern drama and verse, it reflects gendered language and social hierarchies of the time. Poets used it to convey scorn, jealousy, or moral condemnation, particularly in satirical or dramatic contexts. Its presence in poetry helps modern readers understand historical attitudes toward women and the sharpness of verbal insult in earlier literary cultures.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Out, you baggage! you tallow-face!” cries Thersites in Shakespeare, using the term as a sharp insult to strip dignity from its target; A poet might write, “She flung his vows aside as baggage light, unworthy of her heart”; In satirical verse, “Courtly smiles conceal their scorn, calling virtue baggage behind the hand”; A mock-heroic poem could sneer, “Thus kings dismiss their mistresses as baggage when love grows cold.”
Additional Notes
Baggage is a strongly gendered insult in Early Modern English and should be read with attention to historical attitudes toward women, sexuality, and social control. It appears frequently in Shakespeare and contemporaneous drama as a way of asserting dominance or moral judgement, often spoken by male characters in moments of anger or dismissal. For poetry students, it is important to note that the term conveys contempt rather than literal meaning and functions rhetorically to degrade the addressee. When analysing or using the term, consider tone, speaker authority, and the social power dynamics embedded in its usage.
Also Known As
Strumpet Wench Jade Slut Harlot
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