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cenotaph

Historical And Literary Periods
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

A monument to someone buried elsewhere, or to the dead in general.

Detailed Definition
A cenotaph is an empty tomb or memorial monument, often used in solemn or commemorative writing. Shelley applies it to the cloud’s vanished form, treating it like a memorial that disappears and returns.
Example
Example in poetry:
“I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,” imagines a memorial erected without a body; A cenotaph honors the dead, often those buried elsewhere or never recovered; “Names on the cenotaph gathered rain,” lets public remembrance become visual image; “At the empty cenotaph, descendants read names aloud,” connects monument, absence, and living memory
Additional Notes
The word 'cenotaph' is a specialized memorial term that many readers would not know from everyday usage.; Found in the poem, The Cloud by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Other Meanings of “cenotaph”
Also Known As
memorial tombstone monument
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