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Commodity

Economics
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 good or resource that can be bought, sold, or traded; in poetry, often critiqued as reducing value to exchange.

Detailed Definition
A commodity is something valued primarily for exchange, such as grain, oil, cotton, or metal. Poets may use the term to question what happens when land, labor, bodies, memories, or cultural traditions are treated as marketable goods. Its commercial meaning can sharpen a poem's critique of extraction, colonial trade, consumption, and the uneasy conversion of living things into prices.
Example
Example in poetry:
In a harvest poem, wheat becomes a commodity when it is valued chiefly for sale rather than for nourishment; A speaker may describe cotton as a commodity and then recall the enslaved labor hidden behind its price; Pablo Neruda’s odes show how an everyday object can gain poetic dignity beyond its market value; A poem about oil tankers can treat petroleum as a commodity whose global trade darkens seas and skies
Additional Notes
A commodity is a tradable resource, such as wheat, oil, or gold. Its poetic use can contrast human need with the treatment of nature or labor as merchandise.
Also Known As
Goods Merchandise
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