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dug-out

Military
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 shelter or trench dug into the ground for protection in war. In this poem it means a military hideout.

Detailed Definition
A dug-out is an underground or partly underground shelter, especially one used by soldiers. In Owen’s poem, the term places the scene in trench warfare and helps create the cramped, buried setting of the sentry’s post.
Example
Example in poetry:
“We’d found an old Boche dug-out” records the shelter of trench warfare; Wilfred Owen’s war poems repeatedly evoke dugouts, tunnels, and “the darkness” below the front; “Rain drummed on the dug-out roof while shells crossed overhead” places the noun in battlefield context; a modern anti-war poem may call a basement a dug-out to suggest civilians sheltering from bombardment
Additional Notes
This is a specialized military term for a wartime shelter, so readers may need to look it up.; Found in the poem, The Sentry by Wilfred Owen
Also Known As
excavated hollowed dug-out space trench
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