Home › Glossary › Letter F

Fredericksburg

Battles
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

A 1862 disastrous Union assault on Confederate positions, resulting in massive casualties.

Detailed Definition
Fredericksburg epitomized futile frontal attacks and leadership failure. In poetry, it symbolizes the horror of industrialized slaughter and the despair of soldiers—appearing in Civil War verse as a stark contrast to earlier romantic notions of battle, highlighting the dehumanizing machinery of modern conflict and the silence of the dead.
Example
Example in poetry:
Fredericksburg, Lee’s 1862 defensive victory, appears in American poetry as slaughter on Marye’s Heights; A modern sonnet might frame Fredericksburg’s stone wall as a killing machine; In a dramatic lyric, a Union soldier recalls charging into rifle fire at Fredericksburg; A free-verse elegy could mourn the 12,000 Union dead in a single day; Contemporary poets use Fredericksburg to explore futility in frontal assault; A haiku might capture snow falling on Fredericksburg’s bloodied streets.
Additional Notes
Fredericksburg (1862) exemplified futile frontal assaults against entrenched positions; its slaughter features in Civil War poetry as a stark critique of leadership and a meditation on the industrial scale of modern death.
Also Known As
Battle of Fredericksburg
Skip to main content