Home › Glossary › Letter C

Clytie

Mythology
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

Water nymph (Oceanid) who loved the sun god Helios unrequitedly. She pined away watching his daily journey across the sky until transformed into a heliotrope flower that follows the sun.

Detailed Definition
Clytie, abandoned by Helios for Leucothoe, wasted away gazing at the sun and became the heliotrope, which follows the sun’s path. Her myth explains floral heliotropism. Poets use Clytie to symbolize unrequited love, devotion, and the fusion of human emotion with natural cycles in pastoral and elegiac poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
Clytie, nymph who pined for Helios and became a heliotrope, appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Poets use Clytie to symbolize unrequited love and botanical transformation; “Clytie’s gaze” describes eternal longing toward an unattainable light; Her flower follows the sun—ideal for devotion imagery; Her myth blends pathos and natural cycles.
Additional Notes
Clytie, abandoned by Helios for Leucothoe, pines until transformed into a heliotrope that eternally turns toward the sun. Ovid’s Metamorphoses frames her as a symbol of unrequited love and obsessive devotion. The flower’s movement mirrors poetic tropes of longing and constancy—ideal for sonnets or lyrics exploring fixation, loss, and the naturalization of emotion.
Also Known As
Clytia
Skip to main content