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dab

Craft Terms
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

Dab means to apply something lightly in small touches; in poetry, it can suggest brief, delicate placement of detail or color.

Detailed Definition
Literally, dab refers to a gentle touch or a small application of paint, ink, or another substance. In poetry, it may describe minimal but effective detail, where a slight touch creates vividness or emphasis. It belongs in craft language because it evokes the artisan’s careful, selective application.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet may dab small, precise images into a poem the way a painter dabs color onto canvas; Impressionistic free verse often works through dabbed, fragmentary sensory details rather than continuous narrative; A poem about grief might describe dabbing tears as a quiet, restrained gesture of emotion; A poet could use the dabbing of paint on a canvas as an ekphrastic entry point into a poem about art; Haiku often work by dabbing a single sharp image rather than building elaborate description; A love poem might describe dabbing perfume as a small intimate ritual charged with meaning.
Additional Notes
Dab suggests a light, quick, and often delicate application of detail, making it a useful term for discussing imagist and impressionist poetic techniques that favor brief, vivid touches of sensory information over extended description; the term draws an explicit comparison to painting, where dabbing describes the application of small amounts of color, and instructors might use it to discuss how poets like the Imagists favored economy and precision, building a poem's texture through accumulated small details rather than sustained narrative description.
Also Known As
apply lightly touch pat stipple
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