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eaves

Noun
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

The lower edges of a roof overhanging a wall; often associated in imagery with icicles, dripping rain, or birds nesting in autumn.

Detailed Definition
Eaves are the parts of a roof that stick out beyond the wall of a house. In poetry, the word often helps create a domestic, visual setting, as here with birds gathering near the cottage roof.
Example
Example in poetry:
Keats’s “To Autumn” pictures a cottage area where “the red-breast whistles from a garden-croft”; “sparrows’ good-night twitter / About your cottage eaves” locates birds beneath the roof edge; “Rain stitched silver threads from the eaves” makes the architectural noun vivid; in urban poetry, “Pigeons nested under factory eaves” extends the image beyond a rural cottage
Additional Notes
In the line quoted, "eaves" is a specific architectural term that many readers may know only vaguely or not at all.; Found in the poem, The Lost Mistress by Robert Browning
Also Known As
overhangs roof edges eavestroughs drip edges Eave
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