Home › Glossary › Letter F

fused pause

Device
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 caesura softened or merged with surrounding rhythm, creating a subtle rather than abrupt pause within a metrical line.

Detailed Definition
A fused pause is a caesura or line break where syntactic and rhythmic interruption is minimized through enjambment or elision, creating a seamless auditory transition that maintains momentum despite visual or grammatical segmentation; it blurs boundaries between units for fluid reading.
Example
Example in poetry:
Fused pause merges caesura and enjambment for rhythmic complexity: Shakespeare: “To be, or not to be—that is the question”; John Donne: “Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you”; Contemporary example: “She left— / the door still swinging in the wind of her absence”; In hip-hop poetics: “Money talks—but my silence screams louder”; Such pauses create tension between breath and syntax; They heighten dramatic or emotional effect.
Additional Notes
fused pause: A type of caesura or line-break where the reader must pause, but the syntax and rhythm flow so strongly across the break that the pause feels almost integrated into the ongoing flow; a subtle tension between structure and sense.
Also Known As
Merged pause fused caesura blended stop Blended caesura
Skip to main content