Home › Glossary › Letter D

Disconsolate

Mood
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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 mood of profound sorrow and hopelessness, devoid of solace, often expressed through stark imagery, slow rhythm, and language of irrevocable loss.

Detailed Definition
Disconsolate mood in poetry expresses inconsolable grief through stark imagery, broken rhythm, and raw vulnerability; it appears in laments, post-loss verse, or confessional poetry—like Plath or Hardy—where the speaker’s sorrow resists consolation, laying bare the depth of human suffering with unflinching honesty and emotional precision.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Raven,” Poe’s speaker is disconsolate after the bird confirms he’ll never see Lenore again; Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” describes the disconsolate numbness following grief; In “Fern Hill,” Dylan Thomas mourns lost youth with disconsolate longing; Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips” conveys disconsolate exhaustion in hospital recovery (“I have nothing to do with explosions”); In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop’s final stanza reveals disconsolate loss beneath controlled form; Thomas Hardy’s “The Voice” expresses disconsolate yearning for a dead lover (“Can it be you that I hear?”).
Additional Notes
Disconsolate mood implies inconsolable grief or sorrow; conveyed through heavy rhythm, weeping imagery, and unresolved endings—common in elegies; closely tied to dejected, mournful, and forlorn moods; stronger than sorrowful due to its sense of irremediable loss.
Also Known As
Heartbroken Grief-stricken Miserable Woeful Sorrowful
Skip to main content