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Emmets

Fauna
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

Ants; an old or dialect word. It appears here in a poetic comparison of small and large distances.

Detailed Definition
"Emmets" is an archaic or dialect term for ants, found in older English and Scottish usage. Blake pairs it with "Eagles" to contrast tiny and vast scale, but the word itself is not common in modern reading.
Example
Example in poetry:
Blake writes, “The Emmet’s Inch & Eagle’s Mile / Make Lame Philosophy to smile”; emmet is an archaic word for an ant; “An emmet hauled a crumb across the flagstone” gives the small creature a clear scale; John Clare’s close observation of insects offers a useful pastoral context; a modern eco-poem may restore “emmet” to make ordinary ants sound ancient and communal
Additional Notes
"Emmets" is an old word for ants in the quoted line, so a modern reader is likely to pause over it.; Found in the poem, Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
Also Known As
ants workers industrious insects
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