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druid

Historical And Literary Periods
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 priest, scholar, or religious leader in ancient Celtic societies, skilled in lore and ritual; in poetry, druids evoke mysticism, nature worship, and the archaism of pre-Christian wisdom.

Detailed Definition
Druids were learned religious figures among the ancient Celts, often associated with ritual, prophecy, and sacred knowledge. In modern poetry, the word can suggest something ancient, pagan, or timeless, as in the phrase “the same old druid Time.”
Example
Example in poetry:
Yeats invokes ancient Ireland in “The Hosting of the Sidhe,” where supernatural riders recall druidic lore; “The old druid Time” personifies time as a pagan sage; “A druid reads the oak’s dark leaves for signs” uses the priestly Celtic association; Robert Graves’s White Goddess tradition helped modern poets imagine druids as keepers of ritual knowledge
Additional Notes
The word “druid” in “the same old druid Time” is a specialized historical term, not everyday modern vocabulary.; Found in the poem, Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac Rosenberg
Also Known As
sage wizard nature priest mystic
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