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hen-roost

Farming
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 shelter or perch where hens sleep; in poetry, it suggests rural domesticity, the daily rhythms of farm life, and the humble architecture of animal keeping.

Detailed Definition
A hen-roost is the place where chickens settle for the night. In the poem it belongs to the fable-like tale of the fox sneaking through to the hens, so the word is tied to rural poultry keeping.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Which slyly to the hen-roost led” names the perch or shelter where chickens sleep; “The fox slipped near the hen-roost at moonrise” draws on a familiar farmyard danger; “At dusk the hens climbed home to the hen-roost” gives the word its literal routine; “The abandoned hen-roost leaned behind the barn” uses rural detail to suggest neglect and time
Additional Notes
“Hen-roost” is a rural farming term that is less common in everyday modern reading.; Found in the poem, A Child To His Sick Grandfather by Joanna Baillie
Also Known As
chicken coop poultry house fowl shelter henhouse
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