A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter H

hogshead

Archaic Terms
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 large cask or barrel used for liquids, especially wine or beer; a unit of liquid measure varying by contents, typically 63 gallons.

Detailed Definition
"Hogshead" refers to a large cask used for storing and shipping liquids—wine, beer, tobacco—and to the volume measure it contained, varying from 54 to 140 gallons depending on contents. The term appears in poetry depicting commerce, tavern scenes, or maritime trade where specific containers and measures mattered. Its use provided authentic commercial and nautical detail, grounding narratives in material culture of trade and consumption. Poets employed such specific terminology when depicting ports, warehouses, taverns, or ships' holds where goods' physical reality required concrete vocabulary. The word's association with abundance—hogsheads held substantial quantities—made it useful for depicting plenty, commerce, or excessive drinking. Its commercial specificity suited works exploring economic life, trade networks, and material foundations of society. Such technical vocabulary enriched literary language by connecting abstract themes of commerce and consumption to concrete physical realities of containers and measures.
Example
Example in poetry:
The tavern keeper served ale by the hogshead; "A hogshead of wine for the wedding feast"; A hogshead is a large cask for liquids; Merchants shipped hogsheads of goods overseas; The cellar contained many hogsheads of beer; A hogshead holds about sixty-three gallons
Additional Notes
Hogshead appears in commercial, maritime, and domestic contexts as specific liquid measure and physical container. The term's earthy name (hog's head) grounds it in material culture despite uncertain etymology. Appears in realistic descriptions of shipping, tavern supplies, and household stores. Related to barrel, cask, and other container terms. Essential for analyzing commercial vocabulary, material culture representation, and how literature grounds itself in physical economic reality. The specific capacity (varying by contents: wine, beer, etc.) shows premodern measurement complexity. Useful for discussing how texts represent trade and commerce, domestic economy, and whether authors use precise terminology for realism or atmospheric effect. Maritime literature employs it frequently for authentic nautical atmosphere.
Other Meanings of “hogshead”
Also Known As
barrel cask vessel tun
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