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corset

Apparel
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 supportive undergarment worn to shape the torso, constructed with stiffening elements and lacing, appearing in poetry as a symbol of femininity, discipline, and the pressure of social norms.

Detailed Definition
The corset occupies a complex and often contentious place in modern poetic imagination, frequently invoked in feminist and historical verse to critique the constraints of patriarchal beauty standards. Yet it also appears in Victorian and Romantic poetry as a garment of elegance, enhancing the natural waist and creating the desired silhouette. Its steel or whalebone structure and tight lacing require assistance to don, making scenes of corset-tying intimate or laborious. Poets use the corset to explore themes of breath, suffocation, and bodily autonomy; its removal is often a moment of freedom or surrender. In love poetry, the corset's stiff exterior conceals a beating heart, and in humorous verse, a broken stay or popped lace produces comic embarrassment. Its historical evolution also mirrors changing attitudes toward female agency.
Example
Example in poetry:
"The corset makes me pretty. The corset makes me perfect. It constricts me, controls me" (FictionPress); "How She Felt In Her First Corset... the girl was rigged out as the mother desired" (Matt W. Alderson); "A Red Corset tightly keeps everything in! All her sweetness of soul and her whiteness of skin concealed beneath rubies"; "cane, cravats, and corsets tell" (Poetry Foundation); "The corset's whalebone ribs held her like a cage of virtue"; "She unlaced her corset and let the century fall from her shoulders"; "The corset was both armor and prison, shaping her into someone else's dream"
Additional Notes
The corset occupies a complex and often contentious place in modern poetic imagination, frequently invoked in feminist and historical verse to critique the constraints of patriarchal beauty standards. Yet it also appears in Victorian and Romantic poetry as a garment of elegance, enhancing the natural waist and creating the desired silhouette. Its steel or whalebone structure and tight lacing require assistance to don, making scenes of corset-tying intimate or laborious. Poets use the corset to explore themes of breath, suffocation, and bodily autonomy; its removal is often a moment of freedom or surrender. In love poetry, the corset's stiff exterior conceals a beating heart, and in humorous verse, a broken stay or popped lace produces comic embarrassment. Related terms include stays, bodice, and corselet. Students should note the corset's ability to function as both a symbol of oppression and a tool of empowerment, depending on poetic context, and its historical evolution mirrors changing attitudes toward female agency and the body.
Also Known As
stays bodice waist trainer
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