Home › Glossary › Letter C

Colander

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 perforated bowl used to drain food. It can suggest filtering, release, and what remains after abundance passes through.

Detailed Definition
A colander is a bowl or basin punctured with holes so water can drain from pasta, vegetables, or washed fruit. Poets may notice its bright perforations, its rush of water, and the food left cupped in its frame. As an image, it can represent memory’s gaps, the sorting of what is useful from what is lost, or a household’s practical grace under pressure.
Example
Example in poetry:
Water streams through the colander, leaving bright berries cupped in its metal bowl; A poet can compare a colander to memory, which retains a few details while letting others escape; The colander’s holes cast a dotted pattern of light across the kitchen counter; The speaker rinses rice in a colander, using the ordinary action to slow the poem into a moment of attention
Additional Notes
A colander is useful for poems about selection and loss: water escapes while food remains. Its holes may suggest limits of memory, porous boundaries, or the necessity of letting something go.
Also Known As
Cullender
Skip to main content