Home › Glossary › Letter H

haycocks

Farming
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

Small piles of hay made in a field to dry before being gathered.

Detailed Definition
A haycock is a traditional farming term for a little heap or cone of cut hay left in the field. In the poem, the word helps evoke an old rural landscape, but it is not common everyday vocabulary.
Example
Example in poetry:
“And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry” names small conical piles of cut hay; “Haycocks stood like dun tents across the field” uses their distinctive shape in simile; traditional pastoral verse often places haycocks in late-summer harvest scenes; “Rain darkened the haycocks before the baler came” brings the older farming image into modern agriculture
Additional Notes
The farming term in the quoted line is uncommon today and may need explanation.; Found in the poem, Adlestrop by Edward Thomas
Also Known As
Hay Bales Haystacks Hay Mounds Fodder
Skip to main content