Home › Glossary › Letter F

Fatigue

Psychology
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

Progressive loss of strength or motivation due to prolonged effort or stress.

Detailed Definition
Fatigue in poetry manifests through monotony, broken lines, and images of dragging limbs or failing light. It reflects not only physical but moral or existential weariness, as in soldiers' poems or post-industrial laments. Poets use fatigue to critique relentless modernity or to convey the cost of resilience. It humanizes grand themes, grounding abstract struggle in bodily sensation, and invites readers to honor rest and limitation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Fatigue in Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking" explores labor and fatigue with irregular line lengths; Pablo Neruda's "Walking Around" opens with "I am tired of being a man"; Hilaire Belloc's "Fatigue" humorously dismisses love and rhyme for money; "fatigue is a phantom" personifies fatigue as a lulling presence; John Hollander's "Reflections on Espionage" depicts the exhausting nature of espionage; The poem "Tired" expresses emotional burnout and exhaustion.
Additional Notes
Fatigue in poetry manifests through monotony, broken lines, and images of dragging limbs or failing light, reflecting physical, moral, or existential weariness. In teaching, distinguish fatigue from exhaustion: fatigue is progressive loss of strength, while exhaustion is complete depletion. Poets use fatigue to critique relentless modernity or to convey the cost of resilience. It humanizes grand themes, grounding abstract struggle in bodily sensation. Students should analyze how poets use repetition, heavy consonants, and imagery of weight or slowness to evoke the experience of being worn down.
Other Meanings of “Fatigue”
Also Known As
Tiredness weariness lethargy burnout overwork
Skip to main content