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embalmer

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

A person who preserves a dead body, especially for burial. Here it is used metaphorically for Sleep as something that preserves or stills the speaker.

Detailed Definition
An embalmer is someone who treats a body to delay decay. Keats uses the word figuratively to make Sleep seem like a gentle preserver that quiets and suspends life rather than a literal funeral worker.
Example
Example in poetry:
Keats calls sleep the “soft embalmer of the still midnight,” personifying it as one who gently prepares the dead; “The embalmer’s careful fingers closed the day’s bright eyes” echoes that tender diction; Poe’s funerary atmosphere offers a darker literary context for embalmment and mourning; a contemporary elegy might call winter “the embalmer of the garden” after frost stills the flowers
Additional Notes
In the line "O soft embalmer of the still midnight," the word is specialized because it names a burial-related profession, not an everyday action or object.; Found in the poem, To Sleep by John Keats
Also Known As
preserver mortician funeral director
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