Home › Glossary › Letter D

Dune

Geology
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 hill or ridge of wind-blown sand. It suggests shifting form, exposure, and beauty made by restless motion.

Detailed Definition
A dune is an accumulation of sand shaped and moved by wind, often found in deserts, on coasts, or beside dry inland lakes. Though it may appear solid from a distance, it is always changing grain by grain, advancing, collapsing, and reforming. Poets can use dunes to explore impermanence, desire, wandering, or the way a landscape records invisible forces. Their curved ridges make wind visible, turning movement itself into a temporary sculpture.
Example
Example in poetry:
At dawn, the dune changed shape beneath the wind's invisible hand; A dune can represent impermanence because its ridges are continually remade by moving sand; “We climbed the dune without leaving a lasting path” uses the landscape to explore fleeting human presence; A desert poem may describe dune shadows as blue or violet, adding visual precision to a spare setting
Additional Notes
Dunes migrate as wind moves sand grain by grain. Their shifting ridges suit poems about impermanence, exposure, desire, and landscapes without fixed borders.
Other Meanings of “Dune”
Also Known As
Sand Dune
Skip to main content