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Depression

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 severe, sustained decline in economic activity. It can provide poetry with images of idleness, loss, and social endurance.

Detailed Definition
An economic depression is a prolonged crisis of falling production, widespread unemployment, reduced trade, and deep insecurity. In poetry, it may appear through shuttered shops, empty factories, waiting lines, foreclosed homes, and the strained dignity of people seeking work. The term can also resist abstraction by asking how large economic forces enter kitchens, bedrooms, bodies, and family stories, leaving scars long after recovery begins.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem set during the Great Depression can show unemployment through silent factories, bread lines, and foreclosed farms; Langston Hughes’s poetry often records the pressures of poverty and racial inequality during the Depression era; “In the depression, even the piano was sold, leaving music shaped only by memory” links economic collapse to private loss; A modern poem may compare an emotional depression to an economy whose confidence and energy have fallen
Additional Notes
Economic depression differs from personal sadness, though poets may juxtapose both to show widespread hardship and endurance.
Other Meanings of “Depression”
Also Known As
Economic Depression Slump
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