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Fricative

Prosody
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 consonant sound produced by forcing air through a narrow opening in the vocal tract

Detailed Definition
Fricatives include sounds like "f," "v," "s," "z," "sh," and "th," which create distinctive hissing, buzzing, or breathing qualities. In poetry, fricatives are essential to alliteration and assonance patterns; they also contribute significantly to a poem's sonic texture and emotional resonance, often creating softness or harshness depending on the specific sound and frequency of use.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” the repeated /s/ fricatives in “A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice” create a hissing, ethereal effect; In Poe’s “The Raven,” the line “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” uses /s/ and /z/ fricatives to mimic whispering; In Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty,” the phrase “swift, slow; sweet, sour” employs /s/ and /f/ fricatives to contrast textures; In Plath’s “Daddy,” the line “I have always been scared of you” uses the /s/ fricative to convey tension and fear; In Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” “The wind crosses the brown land, unheard” uses /s/ and /θ/ fricatives to evoke dryness and silence; In Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed” uses the /d/ and /z/ (voiced fricative) to suggest chaos.
Additional Notes
A fricative is a consonant sound produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together, creating audible friction (e.g., /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/). In prosody, fricatives contribute to the texture and musicality of verse, often used in alliteration or consonance to create sonic effects. Poets may exploit the hissing quality of sibilant fricatives (like /s/ and /ʃ/) for mood-setting—e.g., in eerie or whispering passages. Fricatives contrast with plosives (which involve a complete closure and release of airflow) and are key in phonetic analysis of poetic rhythm and euphony.
Also Known As
fricative consonant
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