Home › Glossary › Letter F

freight

Noun
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

Goods or cargo transported commercially by ship, rail, truck, or aircraft; in modern and industrial poetry, freight connotes commerce, weight, transience, and the material flow of global economies.

Detailed Definition
Freight usually means cargo being transported, especially by ship or train. Here it is used for the ship’s load, giving the vessel a practical, working purpose rather than only a beautiful one.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Living freight” in a ship poem treats passengers, migrants, or animals as cargo, a phrase that can expose commerce’s dehumanizing language; In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the ship’s human burden is repeatedly tested by thirst, isolation, and death; “The train bore freight through midnight rain” uses the ordinary cargo sense, emphasizing weight and movement; A contemporary migration poem may call refugees “no freight, but families,” deliberately resisting the reduction of people to goods
Additional Notes
Although slightly specialized in this context, it is still a familiar everyday word and not obscure enough to need glossing.; Found in the poem, I Am Standing Upon the Seashore by Henry Van Dyke
Also Known As
cargo burden load freightage
Skip to main content