Home › Glossary › Letter I

Intensive form

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 linguistic strategy using intensifiers, superlatives, or emphatic syntax to convey extreme emotion, urgency, or heightened sensory or conceptual states.

Detailed Definition
A grammatical or rhetorical form that emphasizes or strengthens expression through intensifying structures like superlatives, emphatic pronouns, or reinforcing constructions. Intensive forms create emphasis and emotional weight in poetry, as when poets use constructions like "I myself" or "the very essence" to stress particular elements, though like other emphatic devices, they lose effectiveness through overuse and work best when deployed strategically at crucial moments.
Example
Example in poetry:
Intensive form amplifies meaning through repetition or affixes; Shakespeare’s “most unkindest cut of all” (Julius Caesar); intensive adjectives like “very unique” (though grammatically contested); modern example: Sylvia Plath’s “terrible fish” intensifies through context; this form heightens emotional or descriptive force; it’s common in lyric and dramatic poetry; intensive form can signal obsession or extremity.
Additional Notes
Emphasizes through grammatical means. Related to superlatives but broader category. Can include emphatic pronouns, intensifying adverbs, and reinforcing constructions.
Also Known As
Emphatic form Strengthened expression Heightened language Intensified state Elative case
Skip to main content