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ferry

Nautical
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 boat or vessel used to carry people, vehicles, or goods across a body of water; in poetry, it symbolizes transition, the boundary between worlds, the journey to the afterlife, or the inevitability of travel.

Detailed Definition
A ferry is a boat that makes regular trips across a river, harbor, or other body of water. In the poem, the speakers have been riding back and forth on one all night, which helps set the scene and the tired, drifting mood.
Example
Example in poetry:
“We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry” makes the ferry both transport and rhythmic refrain; Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” imagines a sea crossing as passage toward death, though it does not name a ferry; “The Staten Island ferry horn / divides the dawn” places a working vessel in contemporary urban lyric; A ferry can symbolize connection between shores, classes, countries, or states of mind
Additional Notes
In this line, "ferry" names a specific watercraft, which some readers may want to identify in context.; Found in the poem, Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Other Meanings of “ferry”
Also Known As
boat vessel watercraft craft Barge
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