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inversion

Device
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

The deliberate rearrangement of standard word order (e.g., object before subject) to emphasize key terms or create poetic rhythm.

Detailed Definition
Inversion in poetry is the deliberate reversal of standard word order (e.g., “sweet is the night” instead of “the night is sweet”) to achieve metrical regularity, archaic tone, or rhetorical emphasis; common in classical and Romantic verse, it can heighten musicality or foreground key elements through syntactic surprise.
Example
Example in poetry:
Inversion: “Him I saw” instead of “I saw him” for metrical emphasis; In “Paradise Lost,” “Him the Almighty Power / Hurled headlong” uses inversion for grandeur; Dickinson: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers— / Untouched by Morning—” inverts syntax for mystery; Contemporary poets invert to disrupt cliché: “Gone the days of innocence”; Inversion alters rhythm and foregrounds key words.
Additional Notes
inversion: A reversal of the typical or expected word order in a line of poetry (e.g., placing the verb before the subject: "Sees the girl the tree"); often used to maintain meter, emphasize a word, or create an archaic/formal tone; also called anastrophe.
Also Known As
anastrophe poetic reversal syntactic inversion Catathesis Flip
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