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Circadian Rhythm

Time And Calendar
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

The roughly twenty-four-hour bodily cycle governing sleep, waking, and other recurring processes. It gives poetry a language for intimate, biological time.

Detailed Definition
Circadian rhythm describes the internal daily pattern through which bodies respond to light, darkness, hunger, sleep, and alertness. In poetry, it can connect personal feeling to the cycle of a day, especially in work about insomnia, illness, labor, aging, or urban life. Unlike the measured clock, circadian time is embodied and variable, allowing a poem to show how grief, desire, or disruption can unsettle even the most familiar hours.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet may describe circadian rhythm through the body’s repeated cycle of waking, hunger, alertness, and sleep; In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” evening fatigue and habitual urban routines suggest a life governed by daily rhythms; A night-shift poem can show circadian rhythm disrupted when the speaker sleeps in daylight and works under electric lamps; “My circadian rhythm mistakes dawn for an alarm” gives a scientific term an intimate, contemporary voice
Additional Notes
Circadian rhythm is the roughly twenty-four-hour cycle regulating sleep, waking, hunger, temperature, alertness, and responses to light. In poetry it links bodily time to dawn, noon, dusk, night work, insomnia, fatigue, or artificial light; disruption can suggest travel, illness, grief, or modern routine. Compare calendar time and seasonal cycles, which operate on larger scales. Study hint: trace changes in the body as well as the sky to make daily time felt.
Also Known As
Biological Clock Body Clock Diurnal Rhythm
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