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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
The rhythmic rise and fall of spoken language, shaped by stress, pitch, and phrasing, often used in poetry to create musicality without strict meter.
Explore this topic in depth (5)
Free Verse
— Free verse is not prose broken into short lines. It is verse that gives up a regular metrical pattern and predetermined rhyme scheme, while using lineation, cadence, syntax, repetition, sound and space to make deliberate form.
Imagism
— Imagism was an early twentieth-century Anglo-American poetic movement that made clarity, compression and musical rhythm into a programme. Its poems ask readers to attend closely: a few concrete details, carefully arranged, can carry perception, feeling and thought.
Lyric Poetry
— Lyric poetry is a broad poetic mode, not a fixed form or simply another name for song lyrics. Discover how lyrics shape experience through voice, sound, address and movement—and how reading and listening can reveal their workings.
Childhood in Poetry
— Poems about childhood explore play, learning, family, work and the changing boundaries of independence. This guide shows how to read their voices and forms without assuming that childhood is always innocent, protected or happy.
Repetition in Poetry
— Repetition is one of poetry’s most flexible ways of making language memorable. It can establish a beat, return us to an idea, sharpen an argument or make the same words mean differently each time they come back.
Detailed Definition
Cadence in poetry refers to the natural rise and fall of rhythm in speech or verse, shaped by stress, pause, and intonation rather than strict meter; it creates musicality through organic flow, as in free verse by Walt Whitman or contemporary spoken word.
Example
Example in poetry:
Cadence in Whitman’s free verse: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself"; Jazz-influenced cadence in Langston Hughes: "Dream deferred?"; Cadence in prayer-like repetition: "Lord, have mercy"; Modern spoken word uses cadence for emotional build; Cadence follows speech rhythm over strict meter
Additional Notes
Natural rhythm of speech or verse; rising and falling pattern. Related: rhythm, meter, stress pattern. Tip: Cadence exists even in free verse; describes overall flow rather than strict metrical pattern.