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desolates

Verb
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

To make empty, bleak, or devastated. In poetry it often describes emotional ruin as well as physical destruction.

Detailed Definition
In this poem, desolates describes grief as something that lays waste to the soul. The word has a strong, elevated literary feel and is less common in ordinary conversation, where a reader may be more familiar with devastates or ruins.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Great grief that desolates the soul” uses desolates for making utterly lonely, barren, or grief-stricken; The verb can describe emotional devastation as well as ruined land; “War desolates the village and its memory” links physical destruction to communal loss; “After the farewell, silence desolates the room” gives absence an active force
Additional Notes
The word in “Great grief that desolates the soul” is a literary verb that many readers may not use in everyday speech.; Found in the poem, A little time for laughter by Philip Bourke Marston
Also Known As
devastates ruins
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