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Doleful

Mood
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

Expressing a quiet, enduring sorrow—melancholic rather than dramatic—often evoking resignation or gentle lament.

Detailed Definition
Doleful mood in poetry expresses subdued, lingering sadness through muted tones, slow pacing, and melancholic imagery; it appears in reflective elegies or autumnal lyrics—like Hardy or early Eliot—where grief is not explosive but woven into the fabric of daily life, creating a mood of gentle, inescapable sorrow that resonates with quiet dignity.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Raven,” Poe’s repeated “Nevermore” deepens the doleful refrain of loss; Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” conveys doleful numbness after grief; In “Fern Hill,” Dylan Thomas mourns lost youth with doleful nostalgia (“Time held me green and dying”); Thomas Hardy’s “The Voice” expresses doleful longing for a dead lover; Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” portrays a woman’s doleful aging (“In me she has drowned a young girl”); In “Ode on Melancholy,” Keats links beauty and sorrow in a doleful meditation.
Additional Notes
Doleful mood conveys mournful sadness, often with a lyrical or formal quality; signaled by elegiac meter, soft consonants, and lamenting tone—common in traditional elegies; related to mournful, sorrowful, and melancholic moods; carries a poetic, slightly archaic resonance.
Also Known As
Mournful Sorrowful Melancholy Woeful Lamenting Lugubrious dolfull mournfu'
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