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Give way

Idiomatic Phrase
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

To yield, collapse, or retreat; to make space for another person or force; to break under pressure.

Detailed Definition
This versatile idiom captures yielding in multiple registers: physical collapse, gracious deference, or emotional surrender. In poetry, it describes the moment when resistance ends—when grief finally breaks through, when ice shatters underfoot, when the defended heart opens. Poets invoke it at moments of climax, transformation, or resolution, marking the point where whatever has held firm can hold no longer. Its physical immediacy—the sense of structure giving way beneath weight—makes it visceral and embodied, suited to lyric poems that insist on the physical reality of psychological states. The phrase also carries dignity: to give way can be generous, not merely weak, an act of making room for what deserves to pass.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about emotional breakthrough might use give way to describe the moment the defended heart finally yields — not collapse but opening, the protective structure giving way to something that deserves to pass through; In a nature poem, the ice giving way in spring becomes both the literal event and the figure for transformation — the hard season's grip loosening until the weight of what presses against it can no longer be resisted; A poem about grief's full arrival might describe the moment it gives way — through, past the careful management and the maintenance of function, into the space where it can actually be felt; In a political poem about the end of apartheid or another system of enforced injustice, the system giving way is the moment toward which the whole poem has been moving — earned by the pressure of sustained opposition; A poem about a bridge, a dam, a physical structure under stress might literalize give way before extending into the metaphorical register — the structural giving way as figure for the psychological, social, or political collapse that the poem is actually about; The generosity of giving way — its quality of making room, of allowing passage — suits poems that distinguish between collapse and grace, honoring the yielding that is not weakness but the strength to let what deserves to pass, pass
Additional Notes
This idiom has several poetic possibilities: to yield, to collapse, or to make room. It can describe a bridge giving way, resistance giving way to tears, or winter giving way to spring. Because it contains both defeat and transition, it is useful for poems about pressure, surrender, seasonal change, and emotional release.
Also Known As
Yield уступить Collapse
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