Home › Glossary › Letter C

Clock

Household Objects
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

A device that measures and displays time. It often represents mortality, routine, anticipation, or the pressure of passing hours.

Detailed Definition
A clock is a household timepiece whose hands, pendulum, chime, or ticking mechanism marks the division of the day. Poets use it to make time audible within a room, especially in moments of waiting, grief, insomnia, or solitude. A stopped clock may imply suspended memory or death, while a loud clock can turn domestic quiet into tension. Its regular movement frequently contrasts with the irregular pace of feeling, making it a useful symbol of human resistance to time.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The clock ticked above the silent table” uses sound to emphasize waiting; Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” makes the “ticking” of time part of a tense midnight atmosphere, a useful model for using a clock as mood; “At noon the clock struck twelve, and every promise sounded late” turns clock time into emotional pressure; A stopped clock in “The clock froze at the hour she left” can symbolize grief or memory
Additional Notes
A clock’s ticking gives poems an audible image of passing time; compare it with watches, bells, calendars, and hourglasses.
Other Meanings of “Clock”
Also Known As
Timepiece
Skip to main content