Home › Glossary › Letter I

involved

Verb
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

Entangled, implicated, or deeply engaged in a complex situation; often describes intricate emotional ties or fateful human affairs in verse.

Detailed Definition
Here involved means bound up with or connected to something else, not just participating in it. Donne uses it to say that human beings are spiritually and morally linked together.
Example
Example in poetry:
Donne, “No Man Is an Island”: “Because I am involved in mankind”; “Involved” here means connected or bound up with, not merely complicated; “Each loss leaves me involved in another’s sorrow” uses the older ethical sense; “The roots are involved beneath the pavement” can also mean intertwined, showing the word’s physical and social possibilities
Additional Notes
The word is common, but this older sense of being bound up with others may be unfamiliar to some readers.; Found in the poem, No Man Is an Island by John Donne
Also Known As
entangled embroiled complicated interwoven
Skip to main content