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Blighted

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

Damaged, ruined, or made unproductive by disease, decay, misfortune, or destructive influence; often used figuratively for hopes or lives.

Detailed Definition
Blighted commonly describes plants ruined by disease, but poetry extends it to hopes, families, neighborhoods, and nations marked by thwarted flourishing. Its agricultural origin gives the word a sense of visible damage: blackened leaves, spoiled fruit, or fields that fail to ripen. In figurative use, a blighted life implies injury from forces larger than the sufferer. It is effective in elegy, social protest, and poems of inheritance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Frost blighted the garden, leaving black petals against the snow; The speaker calls her childhood blighted to suggest promise damaged by hardship; A blighted field can symbolize a community harmed by war or famine; “Blighted stars” creates an image of a sky whose beauty has been spoiled
Additional Notes
Useful for ruined crops, hopes, or lives as well as literal disease. It implies damage that prevents growth.
Also Known As
Blight-Stricken Diseased leprous
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